There was a soft scuffing sound to Carver’s right.
He didn’t move as alarm erupted coldly in his mind. The arrangement of light and shadow on the porch changed subtly. His heart skipped and then picked up about twenty beats per minute.
He knew it was better to stay quiet for now, then move fast and surprise whoever was casting the unfamiliar shadow.
With seeming idleness, he closed his fingers around his cane, tensed his body for action. The taste of fear lay heavy and acidic on his tongue.
“You’re easy to sneak up on,” Alex Burr said.
Carver let out his breath and felt his flow of adrenaline slow. His heart stopped banging against his ribs.
He relaxed his grip on the cane, swiveled his body, scraping an aluminum chair leg on the porch’s plank floor.
Burr was standing about five feet from him, just off the edge of the porch. He was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt with a tie and had his suitcoat slung over his shoulder. Probably his idea of dressing down for the beach.
“I was just about to release my dogs on you,” Carver said.
For an instant Burr believed him; his single blue eye widened slightly and rolled side to side. Panic glittered there.
Then he smiled and stepped up on the porch. “Been swimming?” he asked.
“Yeah. I go just about every morning.”
“For the leg?”
Carver didn’t answer. His therapy was none of Burr’s business. He hadn’t asked Burr about his eye.
“You’ve got a well-developed upper body,” Burr said. “You look strong.”
“It got built up dragging around my lower body.”
Burr walked over and half sat, half leaned on the wooden porch rail in front of Carver. He folded the suit coat neatly with the lining turned out and draped it over an arm. It hung like expensive material. “Desoto says you were a good cop who made cases, that you’re the tenacious type that always finds the only way possible and then does it. He says it’s a flaw in your character.”
“He should know about character flaws.”
“I don’t consider tenacity a flaw.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“And shouldn’t,” Burr said. “Any leads on Willis Davis?”
“None. Other than the junk stashed in his apartment. But I don’t consider that a lead. It doesn’t move me any nearer to finding him.”
The breeze ruffled Burr’s straight blond hair and momentarily revealed the black straps of his eye patch. “It means Willis Davis was no stranger to narcotics.”
“Him and fifty million other people.”
“That coke you found in the coffee can was rich stuff. As high a quality as I’ve ever seen, and not cheap.”
Carver was getting tired of Burr, and he still resented being sneaked up on. “Nothing points to Willis being a coke snorter,” he said, “although the can pretty much confirms he’s a coffee drinker.”
“I wouldn’t worry about him if he were just a snorter, and I’m willing to look the other way from his caffeine habit. But maybe the stuff in his apartment was a sample. Part of what will be a bigger shipment.”
“It’s possible,” Carver admitted. The gun, the red-penciled map, the phony I.D.-none of it sat quite level for Carver, though he wasn’t sure why. Burr might very well be right about an impending drug buy with Marielito involvement. “Why didn’t you tell me Silverio Lujan had a brother?” he asked.
“I didn’t know it at the time,” Burr admitted. “It got by us. I’m sorry.” He admitted the mistake and apologized with an easy grace. Carver thought a little better of him. Or maybe Burr was used to admitting mistakes and apologizing, had gotten good at it.
“Will brother Jorge forgive and forget?” Carver asked.
Burr shook his head no; the blue eye was bright as a stalking bird’s. “You spilled Marielito blood, family blood. That’s why I came here, to warn you and ask if you wanted protection. Someone to watch you, maybe move in with you until this is settled.”
“It seems a long way from being settled,” Carver said. “You don’t even know where Jorge Lujan is, or if he knows his brother is dead.”
“He knows by now,” Burr assured him.
“I’ll live alone,” Carver said. “Not that I don’t think your protection can be effective. But it has its time limit. And I can’t do my job with a DEA man following me around on his scooter.”
Burr didn’t acknowledge the mild slur tossed at his organization. He turned and gazed out at the rolling ocean. “So many damn miles of coastline,” he said. “So many ways to get the stuff in from Mexico or South America. And so many people making so much money the easy way, at other people’s expense, off other people’s misery.” He turned back toward Carver. “You got any ideas on how to stop them?” he asked.
Carver had been put in his place for that scooter remark. He had no idea, short of moving the citizens out of Florida and the U.S. Army in. And probably that would only slow the drug smugglers. “You’ve got a tough job,” he conceded. He held up a hand like a traffic cop warning a speeder to put on the brakes. “But please don’t bore me with statistics.”
“I wasn’t going to. But I think you might have grabbed a thread leading to something big. With more people involved than if this were simply a hundred-thousand-dollar buy.”
“Maybe the money’s a down payment.”
“These folks don’t extend credit, Carver. It’s all cash up front. That way they don’t have to get mad over a deadbeat or bad check and carve up someone. They do business in a very direct way.”
Carver knew just how direct. “What do you make of the map?” he asked.
Burr looked up and watched a sea gull glide over the cottage. He obviously wasn’t sure how much he should confide in Carver. Finally he said, “My guess is that the red-penciled area on the map is a drop point, where somebody’s going to pick up a load of smuggled narcotics.”
“Can a boat get that far into the swamp?”
“Maybe. But it might not be brought in by boat. The area circled is large, maybe three square miles. Most likely a plane will drop the shipment by parachute somewhere in the swamp inside the red-penciled area, and whoever’s going to pick up the drugs will go by boat to retrieve it. They install electronic signaling devices in shipments delivered that way; a man in a boat can hone in on them with a receiver tuned to the same frequency and go right to the drugs.”
“Wouldn’t he have to move fast, before someone else might pick up the signal? Someone like you?”
“Sure, but the smugglers have the jump on us; they know the frequency beforehand and the approximate location of the drug drop.”
“Sounds risky,” Carver said.
“It is risky. So’s stocks and bonds and betting on horses and cards and on where bouncing little balls will land on numbered wheels. But people do all those things because the potential payoff can be worth the risk. This is big business, Carver. We might be talking about a multi-million-dollar deal shaping up in the swamp near Solarville. I’m interested in making the potential profit not worth the risk this time around.”
“I’m only interested in finding Willis Davis,” Carver said. “And speaking of finding people, has Raymond Mackenzie been located?”
“You know about him?”
“Chief Armont told me.”
“He hasn’t been found yet. I’m aware of where he disappeared from; there might well be a connection with what interests us.”
“Or might not be.”
Burr straightened up and tucked in his white shirt more neatly. He wasn’t a large man, but he was built with compact strength, lean-waisted and with a springy kind of erectness to his posture. Carver wondered if there was military service in his background; he wondered about the eye.