“That sounds about right. Desoto explained that you’d been injured and were retired from the force. He said you were recuperating here and had gone into business as a private detective. He thought you might want to hear my story. I’m willing to pay whatever you charge to find Willis, Mr. Carver.”
“You really should hire a bigger organization.”
She was adamant. “Lieutenant Desoto recommended you. He said you could use the business. He also said you were tough, skeptical, had principles, and would surprise me, and you, with your compassion. I’m still waiting for the compassion.”
Carver came out from behind the Formica counter and limped across the hardwood floor, supporting himself with his hands on furniture and the wall, then slumped into a chair opposite Edwina’s. It was a director’s chair, canvas, one he got wet each day after his swim.
“Desoto is a bastard,” he said.
Edwina stared at him in that blank, impenetrable way of hers. “I got the impression he was your friend.”
“He is. I’m a bastard, too. This knee is locked tight at a slight angle for life, Edwina. I’m finished as a cop, and I don’t know any other line of work. Desoto often thinks he knows what’s best for me. Right now, he’s trying to make sure I succeed in the private-investigation business.”
“Maybe he does know what’s best for you.”
Carver kept silent, remembering times when Desoto had known that very thing.
“Lieutenant Desoto says you’re a good detective,” Edwina said. “He says you think like a criminal.”
“I do,” Carver said, “but I only think like one. It’s Desoto who fixes all his relatives’ traffic tickets.”
Edwina shifted her weight in her chair, crossing her legs the other way. Her right leg, which had been on the bottom, was pale where its circulation had been impaired by the weight of the left. For some reason the splotchy coloring beneath her light nylon panty hose intrigued Carver. Aroused him. He hadn’t thought enough about the opposite sex for a long time. His divorce from Laura had been finalized just three days before he’d been shot. Two deep wounds in one week took it out of a man.
“I’m going to make a guess, Mr. Carver,” Edwina said. “It’s true that Lieutenant Desoto probably doesn’t have the manpower to spare for an investigation into what happened to Willis. Or maybe he couldn’t justify such an investigation to his superiors. But he must see a lot of cases like this that he lets drift into official never-never land. I don’t think he’d have sent me to see you unless he thought it was worth discovering what happened to Willis, and unless he thought you were the one who could do the discovering.”
“You’re probably right,” Carver admitted.
“Which leaves us only with the question of whether you want to help me. And help yourself instead of vegetating here.”
Carver didn’t answer. Who was she, to talk to him this way?
“That’s what Lieutenant Desoto said you were doing out here, vegetating.”
“Piss on Lieutenant Desoto. He wouldn’t know a vegetable if it jumped up and gave him vitamin D.”
“But I suspect he knows you quite well.”
“Suspecting seems to be an obsession with you.”
“Lately it has been,” Edwina said. “I’m looking for someone to share that obsession. Shall we discuss terms?”
Carver stood up, leaned to the side, and got his cane from where he’d left it propped against the wall. He planted it firmly on the wood floor, squeezing its burnished walnut handle hard enough to whiten his knuckles.
“Where are you going?” Edwina asked.
“For another swim. I didn’t drip enough water on the floor from the last time I was interrupted.” He tap-tap-tapped to the door with his cane.
“You don’t get around so bad,” Edwina said, following him outside. The screen door slapped shut behind them and reverberated. “You’ve got a lean, strong body; be thankful for that.”
“I am,” Carver said, making for the beach. “You should see me run.” A gull wheeled in low and then soared away in an exquisite arc, screaming, as if taunting him with its limitless blue freedom.
“I’m seeing you run now,” she said. “Away from this case. But you can find Willis. I know it. I can feel it. Lieutenant Desoto knew what he was doing when he sent me here.”
“That’s your own unreasonable optimism you feel.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being an optimist,” Edwina said. She sounded annoyed.
“Not if you thrive on disappointment.” The tip of Carver’s cane hit a soft spot and he almost fell. He was walking too fast; he was annoyed, too.
“I was warned you were cynical,” Edwina said in disgust.
Desoto again.
Near the surf, Carver stopped walking and turned to face her. He didn’t want her to see him backcrawl into the water. She got one of her business cards from her purse and handed it to him. It was an expensive thick white card, engraved with QUILL REALTY and her home and office phone numbers. There was a company logo-a red feather-in the upper right corner.
“Don’t get it wet,” she said. “Consider my offer and phone me.”
“Ever think about trying to find Willis yourself?” he asked.
“I know what I’m good at, Mr. Carver. And what I’m not good at.”
When she turned and began to walk away, Carver extended his cane and used its crook to catch her elbow, gently pulling her around in the soft sand to face him.
She stared at him, seemingly more amused than angry. She was too tough to be swayed by strong-arm tactics, she was telling him with that look.
“If Willis Davis did commit suicide,” Carver said, “he was crazy.”
She removed the cane from her arm. “I know. And Willis isn’t crazy.”
Carver sat down at the edge of the surf and watched her walk away down the beach. Carrying her high-heeled shoes, she strode erectly in her tailored dark business suit among the sunbathers, among all that tanned and glistening female flesh. She was the sexiest thing on the sand. Half a dozen male heads turned in her wake to stare at her as Carver was doing.
He patted his stiff left leg. “Getting well,” he muttered to himself. “Getting well…”
After carefully placing Edwina’s white business card beneath the cane, far enough up on the beach so it wouldn’t get wet, he turned again to the ocean.
It was time to get back in the water.
CHAPTER 3
Carver was awake at five-thirty the next morning, lying in bed in the dimness, turning over in his mind the day six months before when he’d been injured. The kid had taken careful aim and shot him in the knee for the perverse thrill of it. Probably he’d heard about the Irish Republican Army punishing informers by shattering their kneecaps with gunfire, and thought now that he had a cop cornered it might be fun to try this imaginative and permanent imposition of his will. The kid was doing ten to twenty years now in Raiford Prison for armed robbery and assault. Sometimes Carver wished another con would stick a knife in the kid; other times, more and more often now, he didn’t much care and had to remind himself that he should lust for vengeance.
He did wish he hadn’t dropped his revolver as commanded when the second holdup man had stepped out of the back room of the all-night grocery store.
Carver had been off duty that evening and stopped at the store for a pound of ground beef, when he realized a robbery was going down. Realized it by the studied nonchalance of the only other customer, a young Latino with his right hand in his jacket pocket. Realized it by the rubbery features and scent of fear of the old man behind the counter. The Latino youth had sensed cop, panicked, and begun to run, and Carver drew his revolver, yelled that he was police, and ordered the fleeing suspect to halt. All by the book. And the book worked. The suspect stopped abruptly and raised his hands.