Tropical Heat

by John Lutz

  “Drop?” Carver asked.

  “Where the Army Corps of Engineers graded the land to rise well above sea level,” Edwina said. “They placed rocks about sixty feet below to keep the beach from eroding.”

  Carver was getting the idea. “Was it your friend who called the police?” he asked.

  “Yes. Alice phoned them from my house. The back door was unlocked. Willis had poured another cup of coffee, apparently. It was on the veranda table, cool and full to the brim. There was a glass of grapefruit juice, untouched, and on a plate was a sweet roll with only one bite out of it. And, most important, there wasn’t a body on the rocks at the foot of the drop.”

  “It might have washed away, out to sea. Bodies do that.”

  “That’s what the police say.”

  “The police know bodies and water.”

  “I’m reminded of that every time I go to headquarters,” Edwina said.

  So Willis had decided to commit suicide in the middle of breakfast, Carver thought. What an impulsive guy. He’d suddenly put down his sweet roll and walked to the edge of the drop, then removed his shoes and jacket and dived onto the rocks. Then the sea had pulled his body out to the depths, maybe claiming it for the rest of recorded time. Well, it could have happened that way. The shoes and jacket didn’t bother Carver; suicides often prepared methodically for death, as if in the hereafter they might be graded for neatness.

  “Was the jacket folded?” he asked.

  Edwina nodded. “It was resting on top of the shoes so it wouldn’t get dirty. As if Willis expected to return for it.”

  “Was anything in the pockets?”

  “Willis’s wallet, with all his credit cards and over a hundred dollars in it. Also a few other things: a comb, two ticket stubs.”

  Carver took another sip of beer, noticing that it was getting warm from the heat of his hand on the can. “Miss Talbot . . . Edwina . . . I have to tell you that Willis’s behavior isn’t inconsistent with suicide.”

  She raised her eyebrows as if annoyed that Carver had jumped to a conclusion, irritated by a world in general that wouldn’t hear her out before passing judgment. “I thought it was suicide myself, until I began to think about how Willis had acted with me that last night we were together. I can’t simply close my mind to that.”

  Carver tried the beer again. It was too warm for his taste. Foamy. Edwina was gazing with unblinking beautiful gray eyes at him.

  He matched her stare, trying not to get lost in those eyes. “What do you hypothesize?” he asked. “What really happened?”

  “I think Willis is still alive. He knew someone was after him, coming for him; he was afraid. He was taken by whoever came. Or he faked his own death, so he’d be safe, and then ran.”

  “Ran why?”

  “I don’t know. Gambling debts, trouble with someone from his past. It could be any of a hundred reasons.”

  “You must have some specific idea, among that hundred.”

  “Well, there’s something I didn’t mention to the police,” Edwina said in a measured voice, “because I didn’t want to risk getting Willis into any more trouble than he might already be in. There was some money. I saw it the week before he disappeared, in a shoe box in his dresser drawer.”

  “How much money?”

  “I don’t know. There were hundred-dollar bills on top, several of them. I don’t know what was down deeper in the box. I just got a glimpse of it as he was putting the lid on before he pushed the drawer shut.”

  “Did you ask Willis about the money?”

  “Yes. He said he’d cashed some bonds at the bank. To loan the money to a friend.”

  “What bank? What friend?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Do you think the money is connected to his disappearance?”

  “No,” she said, “but I can’t be sure. I do know that the money, shoe box and all, is gone now. Willis is a kind and considerate person, not the sort to get into trouble. But he likes to help people, more than he should. I think he inadvertently got mixed up with the wrong people. He’s running from them now, and when—if—they find him, they might . . .” She swallowed hard. Holding back tears? “You have to find him before whoever is after him does.”

  “Do you know what wrong people might be after him?” Carver asked.

  “No, I don’t. Honestly.”

  He didn’t know if he believed her. She’d do almost anything to make sure he took the case. He wasn’t all that impressed by this money story, didn’t know if he believed even that. She might be throwing it at him as added incentive to believe Willis was alive and to find him.

  “I only know he isn’t dead,” she said. “He didn’t kill himself. He’s still alive somewhere. In danger.” Her voice almost broke. “Maybe terrible danger.”

  “I’m not sure the facts indicate that, Edwina.”

  “I told you the way Willis made love to me the night before he left, as if he knew it might be the last time, as if he were saying good-bye. I’ve been told good-bye that way before. I recognize it. I know Willis didn’t commit a sudden-impulse suicide. But how do I convince the police?”

  How indeed? Carver thought, picturing Lieutenant Desoto’s handsome, somber face as the lieutenant listened to a hunch based on passion. It wasn’t the sort of evidence to convince a coroner’s inquest. It wasn’t evidence at all.

  “Why are the Orlando police involved?” Carver asked. “You live in Del Moray.”

  “When Willis moved in with me he kept his apartment in Orlando because he couldn’t get out of his year’s lease. His official address is still Orlando. I tried to get the police there to list him as a missing person, but they wouldn’t.”

  “Desoto is in Homicide,” Carver noted.

  “Missing Persons had me talk with him. Willis left no note, nothing. Though Willis is missing, the police see his disappearance as a possible murder officially, only what they really believe is that he committed suicide and the current carried him out to sea. So they’re not investigating a murder, and they’re not searching for a missing person. They’re doing nothing.”

  “They’re officially keeping the case open,” Carver said, “and unofficially closing it. Leaving it in limbo in the wrong department—if it is the wrong department. If Willis was a suicide, they don’t have a worry. If it turns out he might have been a murder victim, the department’s ass is covered; it’s a pending case.” For a moment his expression was one of distaste. “Bureaucracy,” he said. He poured the rest of his beer down the sink drain, watching it foam and swirl and disappear.

  “Your friend Desoto doesn’t strike me as a bureaucrat.”

  “He is, though, in his bossa nova way. The Orlando police have a caseload they can barely cope with. It’s a fact of life that prevents them from paying proper attention to certain odds-against cases. They call it ‘prioritizing.’ Maybe it’s necessary, but it ignores the human factor. Most cops are human, and prioritizing bothers them. Even Desoto is human. So he sent you to see me so that justice might be served, and to get you off his back.”

  “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 i
n 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.

  That’s when the book failed Carver. A soft voice behind him said, “Drop the piece, Wyatt Earp, and nobody gets their guts shot out.” It was the kind of voice Carver had heard a few times before, not scared when it should have been scared, and with a touch of gloating, sadistic humor. Carver let the comforting weight of his revolver drop to the floor. His heart fell with it.

  The second gunman had been in the back room. He was a skinny black kid about twenty, with a scraggly bandito mustache and a frantically active protruding Adam’s apple. When he walked around Carver on his way to the door, gripping a grocery sack full of money in one hand and a cheap oversized revolver in the other, he lowered the aim of the pistol, and blasted away Carver’s kneecap. It was as if he’d done that sort of thing almost every day of his life; as natural as zipping up his pants.

  Carver was on the floor before he knew what had happened, aware of nothing but a numbness in his leg. And within a few seconds came the pain that was to be Carver’s close companion—the blinding, encompassing pain. Pain that absorbed him and shut out the rest of the world. He w
as unaware that the woman who had been knocked unconscious in the back room had come to and phoned the police, unaware that both youthful holdup men, including the skinny black one with the gun stuck in his belt, had been stopped in the parking lot and arrested. Unaware of anything but the searing everything of the pain, sickening him, sending him in a terrifying plunge down a black well that was bored to the center of the earth.

  Then the hospital room. White. Everything white. Clean.

  Safe.

  And the infuriating news about his leg.

  For a moment Carver thought he was back in the hospital. Then he realized he was in his own bed at home, squeezing the beaded edges of the mattress so hard that his fingers ached. The sea made soothing whispering sounds outside his open windows, telling him to relax, the pain had ended. Maybe that was why he’d really moved there, for the mothering, comforting sound of the sea.

  Carver swiveled to sit on the edge of the mattress, then reached for his cane and stood up. He was dizzy for a few seconds, and sweating heavily, though the morning hadn’t begun to heat up. Nude, he limped across the room to the bathroom, hung his cane on the doorknob, and stepped into the shower stall.

  The blast of cold water jolted him awake cruelly and lodged his mind firmly in the present. When he was chilled and began to shiver, he turned on the hot tap. He was spending too much time alone since the injury, that was for sure. Planted in the past.

  Vegetating.

  When he’d finished showering, Carver shaved for the first time in three days. After rinsing the lather from his face, he liked what he saw in the fogged mirror a little better. But only a little. He had never been a handsome man, but now his face had taken on a new, predatory gauntness. He was dark, almost swarthy, except for his sun-bleached eyebrows and pale blue eyes. And he was practically out of hair now, gleamingly bald on top but with thick grayish curls around his ears and growing well down the back of his neck. The line of his nose was long and straight; his mouth was full-lipped and resolute, turned down slightly at one corner by a thin, boyhood scar. Ugly dude. Mean dude. The best you could say about his features was that they were strong.