“Fire, huh?” Carver said, feeling the ice of fear trickle down his spine. He thought about the night he almost choked to death in his room at the Tumble Inn, the searing pain in his near-bursting lungs, the panic that had threatened to engulf him and deliver him to mindless, agonizing death.
“Fire and knives and guns and piano wire. Anything that kills,” Desoto said. “It all fits Jorge Lujan’s style. He’s probably heard his equally humanitarian brother Silverio is dead by now.” Desoto’s dark eyes took on a sad seriousness. “Venganza,” he said. Vengeance.
“You think Jorge might be after me for killing Silverio?” Carver asked. He didn’t like to think about being stalked, especially by someone with a compelling reason to kill. A reason that ran in the blood.
“Maybe,” Desoto said. “Hot Latin temperament and all that. But not to worry, amigo, the DEA will protect you.”
“You’ve met Burr?” Carver asked.
Desoto smiled, white teeth flashing. “Sure, he’s the one who filled me in on the notorious Lujan brothers. They have brief but nasty backgrounds in the U.S., Carver. Burr thinks Silverio Lujan was part of a drug scam in Solarville. But then Burr thinks everybody everywhere is part of a drug scam.”
“Lujan ran with known dealers and users,” Carver said. “According to Burr, that’s all part of being a Marielito. But Silverio Lujan and Solarville don’t necessarily add up to drugs.”
“Marielitos go where there’s money,” Desoto said, “and there is no more money anywhere in Florida than in drugs. Not illicit money, anyway. So a Lujan in Solarville means money for the Marielitos, a drug deal. It means that to Burr, anyway.”
“Burr might be right,” Carver said. He told Desoto about the coffee can with the gun, map, false I.D., and packet of cocaine, hidden behind the access panel beneath the sink in Willis Davis’s apartment.
“We went over that apartment the day after Davis disappeared,” Desoto said. “My men usually check plumbing access panels.”
“Not this time,” Carver said. “Not for a plain old uninteresting suicide.”
“Have you told Burr about this?”
“I thought I’d tell you first, see if you had anything to add. Or subtract.”
Desoto touched the heels of his hands together, then meshed his fingers. “No, you better play straight with Burr, amigo. He’s federal; he can put a permanent kink in your cane. He might be a by-the-book pain in the ass, but he’s got us all by the short hairs. And that map with the area marked off in red really might have to do with a drug deal of some kind.” He pulled his hands apart slowly, as if a delicate magnetic field that he didn’t want to break had developed between them, then leaned farther back in his chair and clasped them behind his head. “Does Edwina Talbot still believe so firmly that Willis Davis is alive?”
“Even more firmly,” Carver said. “I think he’s alive, myself. Alive and wandering around somewhere with Ernie Franks’s money.”
“And somebody else’s name.”
“Which brings me to the main reason I came here,” Carver said. “It occurred to me that if Willis used or was prepared to use either of the identities he had stashed in his apartment, he might have been using a false identity when he met Edwina. He might not be Willis Davis.” Very carefully he picked up the black attache case at his feet and laid it on Desoto’s desk. “Willis’s,” he said. “His prints, or at least a good partial, should be on it somewhere, a smooth section of leather, one of the clasps, glossy paper, the calculator that’s in here. Match them with his prints, which should be all over Edwina’s house, so you know you’ve got Willis’s prints, and run a check on them through the FBI’s master file. Maybe we’ll discover his genuine identity.”
“Such a crafty bastard you are,” Desoto said. “So much more clever than the police.”
“Not really,” Carver said, playing it as straight as Desoto. “It all comes from not regarding Willis Davis as a suicide. I have a different angle of approach. That’s an advantage. I’ll fix it with Edwina so your fingerprint crew can get in her house.”
“Will she cooperate in an attempt to prove her Willis told her another lie?” Desoto asked. “And such a big lie.”
“I think so. She wants the truth. At least some of the time. She’s come that far.”
“Some weaker sex, your Edwina Talbot.”
Carver planted the hard rubber tip of his cane and stood up. “Now you know what I know, and soon I’ll tell Alex Burr so he’ll know.”
“Like a child’s game, eh, Carver?”
“Only when you win,” Carver said. “The losers don’t see it as a game.” He started toward the door.
“You take care, amigo,” Desoto said. “What you’ve gotten yourself into can be dangerous.”
“Marielitos are bad-asses,” Carver said, “but they’re not possessed and protected by the devil.”
“I wasn’t talking about Marielitos,” Desoto said. “They might kill you, but there are slower, more exquisitely pleasurable ways to die.”
Edwina again. “Sooner or later, one way or the other, everybody dies,” Carver said.
He looked back as he limped out the door.
Desoto was grinning his erotic-romantic’s grin.
CHAPTER 22
After leaving Desoto, Carver drove the relatively short distance to the University of Florida and managed to catch the dean of the science department still in his office. Professor Raymond Mackenzie was on sabbatical, the dean said. He didn’t know the purpose of Mackenzie’s trip to the Everglades, but he assumed it was to gather information for a scientific paper. It was publish or perish in academia.
The university supplied Carver with Mackenzie’s address. Carver hadn’t mentioned the student Mackenzie was living with; he wasn’t sure what the dean’s attitude was about that, or even if the university knew that one of its faculty was dallying with a co-ed. That might be perfectly acceptable, or it might be a sticky point with the dean. It all depended on the circumstances.
Mackenzie lived in an apartment development in Catanna, a small town less than an hour’s highway drive from the university. Carver was told by the apartment manager which building the professor lived in. Mackenzie’s name, along with a Lottie Kenward’s, was typed on a white card and slipped into the slot above 2-C’s mailbox. Lottie must be Mackenzie’s live-in co-ed, probably a middle-aged professor’s youth fantasy.
Carver punched the elevator button with the tip of his cane. On the second floor, he went a short distance down the hall and then knocked on the door to 2-C.
Almost immediately he heard movement inside the apartment. He wondered if Mackenzie himself might answer, if he’d for some crazy reason left his Jeep and camping equipment and returned home to hearth and co-ed.
The woman who opened the door was hardly the bubble-gum ingenue Carver had naively expected. She was tall, slender, attractive, black, and at least thirty-five. She was wearing a bright blue dress of some kind of silky material that draped gracefully from her wide shoulders.
“I’m… uh… looking for Professor Raymond Mackenzie,” Carver said.
“He isn’t here,” the woman answered. Her voice was velvet and deep. Her large dark eyes were steady, inquisitive yet guarded. They didn’t blink. “Who wants him?”
“Fred Carver. Who am I talking to?”
“Lottie Kenward. I live here. With Professor Mackenzie. He’s out.”
“I know that he disappeared from his campsite in the Everglades,” Carver said. “I’m a private detective, Miss Kenward. It’s possible that Mackenzie’s disappearance has something to do with a case I’m on.”
Breath trailed from Lottie in a soft sigh. She stepped back to let Carver enter.