Tropical Heat

by John Lutz

  “I’ll be waiting for your call,” she said crisply, and ducked into her car, swiveling gracefully on the seat before pulling the door closed. The pale turn of her ankle below the gray of her skirt was breathtaking.

  The Mercedes’ tires spun and caught hold. Gravel pounded against the insides of the fenders; a few small stones flew free and bounced off Carver’s shoes.

  Edwina didn’t look back at him as she wheeled the car to the driveway, then out onto the highway.

  Carver leaned on his cane in the sultry heat and watched her drive away, pondering the mystery of her. He wondered if part of her appeal might be that hidden chamber of her life, and the fact that she might be manipulating him. He was always one for puzzles.

  He felt like following her, but he didn’t. Instead he went home and packed.

  CHAPTER 11

  IT WAS EARLY EVENING when Carver reached Solarville. The flat terrain and endless orange groves of central Florida, geometrically sectioned by flat, dusty roads, had given way to lusher, more tropical country as he neared the northern edge of the Everglades. He exited from the main highway when he saw the sign signaling the turnoff for Solarville and several other small towns. After following a tree-lined side road for ten miles, he turned south on another road and found himself on Solarville’s main street, Loop Avenue.

  The town was larger than Carver had imagined; a sign proclaimed that the population was over four thousand. Most of the buildings on Loop Avenue were clapboard, the rest were brick. The heat and humidity had done its work. Almost every painted surface was discolored or peeling. There was the usual string of businesses found in towns that size: a barbershop, two service stations, a small movie theater, several restaurants, a hardware store, variety store, Laundromats, a medium-sized supermarket. Solarville was big enough to boast a McDonald’s halfway down Loop. The golden arches seemed about to sag in the heat.

  Carver had the top up on the Olds. He drove through town slowly, ignoring the pedestrians who glanced at him as he sized up Solarville through the bug-splattered windshield. He’d passed a citrus processing plant a few miles before reaching town; he supposed that was where many of the residents worked.

  Not far from McDonald’s was the city hall, a small stone building with an elaborate, weathered dome on it, an architect’s scaled-down dream that had probably been built with federal money during the thirties. Directly next to city hall was police headquarters, not nearly so grand: a low, white-shingled building with a sand-and-gravel lot next to it. There was a dusty blue patrol car parked on the lot, and not far from it a pickup truck with oversized tires, and a winch mounted on the front bumper. The word traffic was lettered on the truck’s door, and on the front near the winch in smaller letters was painted Ditch Bitch. Considering the swampy terrain off the roads, Carver figured the Ditch Bitch had hauled many an errant motorist’s mistake from the muck.

  At the end of town, where Loop fulfilled its promise and began its curve back to the alternate highway, the swamp began and some of the buildings were elevated on stilts. The neighborhood was shabbier there, where people existed closer to brackish water, hordes of mosquitoes, and maybe even an occasional alligator that wandered over to see how the vertical creatures lived.

  Carver turned the Olds away from the gloom of the swamp and drove back the way he’d come, to a sign with an arrow that pointed down a side road to the Tumble Inn Motel.

  The Tumble Inn was a tan brick two-story structure less than a mile outside of town, built in a U as if to embrace its small rectangular swimming pool. A pimply-faced kid who introduced himself as Curt blinked bulbous blue eyes at Carver as if it were a first for anyone to be checking into the place, then accepted Carver’s Visa card, had him sign a registration form, and gave him a tagged key and directions to room 17, the end room on the north leg of the building. “Near the ice machine,” Curt told him conspiratorially, as if ice were the gold of the region and he’d done him a special favor.

  It wasn’t a bad room. Clean. And not so musty once Carver figured out the controls on the air-conditioner and got it humming. The place was decorated in shades of beige, with motel-modern furniture that had been stamped out at some factory where they must make all cheap motel furniture.

  Carver pulled the beige drapes closed, tossed his suitcase up on the beige bedspread and opened it, then rummaged around until he found a clean shirt. He didn’t know how long he’d be staying, so he didn’t unpack; everything he’d brought would resist wrinkles and the press of humidity through the miracle of polyester.

  He entered the tiny, tiled bathroom, rinsed his face with cold water that carried the faint, rotten-egg smell of sulfur, then changed shirts and left the room to drive back into Solarville.

  Carver drove past police headquarters. He’d decided it might not be wise to contact the local law yet; he didn’t want anyone tipping Sam Cahill to the fact that someone was in town watching him. He stopped at a self-service Shell station, filled the thirsty Olds’s tank, then went into the office to pay a greasy little guy with jug ears who was standing behind a greasy counter.

  “Where can I find a local real-estate office?” he asked the jug-eared man, whose uniform name tag identified him as Wilt. Carver peered closely at the sewn-on tag. Yep, Wilt—not Walt. “I’m interested in looking at some property around here.”

  “There’s several places here in town sell real estate,” Wilt said. He punched the keys of a jangly old cash register until the drawer popped open, deposited Carver’s twenty-dollar bill, and handed Carver back his change, two slippery quarters.

  “Which is the closest?”

  “Bain Realty, just down the street,” Wilt said, scratching an oily, protruding ear. “But they’d be closed now. Then down a few blocks the other way is World Real Estate. They’re mostly commercial stuff, though. Or is that the kinda property you’re lookin’ for?”

  “Is that a fairly new phone directory?” Carver asked, ignoring the question and pointing to a pay phone and its slender directory dangling beneath it by a chain.

  “Just a few months old,” Wilt said. He rubbed a greasy forefinger on the right side of his nose, leaving a dark smudge to match the one near his left nostril. He did like oil. Liked it a lot.

  Carver thanked him and stepped over to the phone. Sam Cahill would have to put up some sort of respectable front to satisfy the law here. Carver leafed through grease-marked pages, and there was Cahill listed as a broker along with half a dozen other real-estate agencies. Cahill’s home and office address was on Pond Road. Carver asked greasy Wilt where that was.

  “Not far outside of town. Forks off to the west, where Loop starts to curve.” He pointed vaguely to the south end of town.

  Just then a raggedy-haired fat woman pushed through the door and asked to buy a can of Valvoline. She’d come to the right place.

  Carver gave Wilt a casual half salute and limped back outside to his car. He got a Kleenex from the glove compartment, wiped the grease from his fingers, and drove toward Pond Road.

  It took him less than five minutes to turn the Olds onto Pond. The homes there were well kept up, separated from each other by trees and high swamp brush. They were low ranch-style houses that had the same basic character, probably built within months of each other. Medium-priced houses, but nice ones considering they were in a backwater town like Solarville. Cahill’s address was one of the models with a two-car garage. A four-wheel-drive Jeep was parked in the driveway, the ideal vehicle for showing customers the kind of property Cahill was selling in that area. The garage’s overhead door was open. Inside was a low-slung red Corvette with a chrome luggage rack on its trunk. The car was polished to a high gloss, gleaming like a ruby set in the dimness.

  Carver parked down the road, off to the side, where he could watch the house but where his car wouldn’t be noticeable.

  As darkness fell, no lights came on in the house. Apparently Sam Cahill had a third vehicle that he’d driven away in, or he was away with someone else who ha
d driven.

  There was little point in staying parked there. Carver wondered it he should talk to some of the neighbors, ask them if Cahill stayed alone at his home and office, or if they’d seen another man, one fitting Willis Davis’s description.

  He decided that wouldn’t be wise. It probably would net him nothing, and might alert Cahill to his presence in Solarville. And it wasn’t likely that Willis Davis would make himself so easy to find, even if he was in the Solarville area.

  Carver drove back into town and had supper at the motel restaurant. One of the side dishes he ate was unidentifiable, but it was tasty. Something from the swamp? He decided not to ask the waitress.

  In the booth across from him sat a man and woman in pinstripe business suits that might have been fashioned by the same tailor. The man had the side dish Carver had eaten, but he’d pushed his plate away after a few exploratory bites. The woman, a cool, scrubbed-looking blonde with unblinking green eyes, had played it safe and ordered a roast-beef sandwich. The two of them looked out of place sitting in the vinyl booth in a second-rate motel in a backwater town. The expensive cut and fabric of their conservative clothes, the woman’s subdued but quality jewelry, and their refined but alert behavior suggested that they were high-level executives on a slumming expedition. Maybe corporate lovers getting away to a place where no one they knew would spot them. They didn’t seem the sort to have business other than of a very private nature in Solarville. Lawyers in love? Corporate copulation? Unlikely, but possible.

  Carver shook off that kind of baseless musing, futile speculation. Dirty occupation, dirty mind. He was beginning to think too much like the kind of private detective that kicked open motel doors and snapped photographs. These two were probably nothing more than wealthy tourists driving around the state with time and money to waste. Their type wasn’t unusual in almost any corner of Florida.

  When he got up to pay his bill and leave, the woman glanced at her watch. Carver noticed that it was an expensive-looking Mickey Mouse watch, with what appeared to be diamonds set in each of Mickey’s hands. He walked past the man and woman toward the cashier, wondering what it would be like to have enough money to live and to buy so frivolously.

  Outside he smoked one of his infrequent after-meal cigars, then he drove into town and had a few beers at a local tavern that featured a stuffed alligator suspended by wires above the bar. He said nothing, listened to the conversation around him, and learned nothing. This kind of sleuthing worked mostly on TV and in novels. Or in Desoto’s old movies.

  At nine o’clock he got up and left. He was older now but no wiser. The alligator had been a nothing. If the beer and the air-conditioning hadn’t been frosty cold, the evening would have been a complete waste.

  He walked around town for a while, then bought a Solarville Bugle from a newspaper vending machine and drove back to the Tumble Inn.

  When he got to his room, he phoned Edwina and let her know where he was staying. She told him she’d join him in Solarville sometime the next day. He tried to talk her out of coming, but she was in no mood to be talked out of or into anything.

  When Edwina had gotten off the line, Carver called Desoto and asked him to check with Records on Sam Cahill.

  “Have you found Cahill?” Desoto asked.

  “Sure, it was easy. He’s listed in the phone directory.”

  “Under A for ‘accomplice’?”

  Carver didn’t reply. He wasn’t in the frame of mind for snappy repartee. If Desoto wanted to play Abbott, let him find somebody else to be Costello.

  “Did you talk to Cahill?”

  “Not yet,” Carver said. “I’m going to hang back and watch him for a while. Why?”

  “A description would help with Records. Cahill might be an alias.”

  “I haven’t even seen him yet,” Carver said.

  “Well, he’s a he,” Desoto said. “That narrows it down to a little less than half the population, amigo. Should be no problem. Do you want me to call you back on this tonight?”

  “Sure.” Carver told Desoto where he was staying and gave him the phone number.

  “The Tumble Inn Motel, eh? Is Edwina Talbot with you?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Desoto sounded disappointed.

  “She’s arriving tomorrow.”

  “Ah!”

  After thanking Desoto and hanging up the phone, Carver took off his shoes, stretched out on the bed, and started to read the Bugle. A banker named Jackson was marrying a girl from Miami and the newlyweds were going to live there after a honeymoon in Hawaii. The liquor store on Loop had been robbed of several hundred dollars the day before. A skinny but pretty teen-ager who looked embarrassed in her bathing-suit photograph had been nominated by the hardware store for that year’s Gator Queen. When Carver got to the page-two article about an argument among the winners at a church bingo game, he fell asleep.

  Two hours later, the jangle of the phone awakened him. That and something else. He sat up in bed, breathed in dizzily, and sank back down. He opened his eyes in the darkness and they stung; he couldn’t keep them open. Couldn’t see anyway. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he clenched his eyes shut as tightly as he could. Instinctively, he continued to grope for the ringing telephone.

  Wait a second. Darkness? What about the bingo argument and the Gator Queen? He’d fallen asleep reading the paper—with the lamp on!

  He breathed in, coughed violently, tried again to open his eyes but couldn’t. What the hell? His right arm flailed wildly, and he heard the clatter of his cane as he knocked it from where it was leaning against the table by the bed.

  With a cold pang of fear, he suddenly understood.

  The fear deepened, rushed him straight down in a roller-coaster plunge. It took him a few seconds to fully accept what was happening.

  The room was full of smoke.

  CHAPTER 12

  CARVER ROLLED OFF THE bed and dropped to the floor, pressing his cheek to the rough carpet and sucking for breathable air, praying for it. He pulled more smoke into his lungs, gagged, and coughed.

  For a moment he lay still, willing himself to control the terror that threatened to panic him, trying to blot out the vision of a man he’d discovered in a burned car when he was still in the police department. He hadn’t recognized the thing on the front seat as a man at first. He’d—

  Carver actually snarled at himself, jolting his mind from surrender and certain death. He groped for the bed, the legs of the nightstand, to get his bearings, and began to crawl toward the door, dragging his stiff leg. Every few feet he’d press his face to the carpet and draw a cautious, shallow breath, enough air to allow himself another foot or so of progress.

  Finally his rigid fingertips bumped into the smooth hard surface of the door. He scrambled against it, raising his body, found the doorknob and turned it.

  The door was locked.

  Carver grasped the knob tightly, squeezing frantically to keep his sweaty fingers from slipping off the slick metal, and pulled his body higher.

  He found the sliding bolt lock, fumbled with it, feeling a shock of pain as he bent back a fingernail and instinctively jerked his hand away.

  Grasping the lock again, more carefully, he gradually forced the bolt sideways, until it jammed. He shoved hard against it. He lost his footing then, supporting his entire weight for a second by painfully squeezing the hard metal lock between his thumb and forefinger. Then his grip was torn loose.

  He wasn’t sure if the bolt had slid free. But when he fell backward, the door swung open.

  Immediately the air down low was breathable, as dark smoke rolled from the room. Carver heard voices, the wailing yodel of a fire truck or police car. The siren got closer, louder, deafening, then growled to reluctant silence like a record running down. He dragged himself forward, over the hard-edged threshold, out onto the concrete in front of the open door. Then he wriggled off to the side, away from the black pall of smoke.

  Multicolored lights were suddenly
dancing around him. People were shouting. Soles scraped on concrete. Another siren sent up a wail in the distance. Hands grabbed him roughly beneath the arms and pulled him away. His stockinged feet bounced painfully over the rough concrete and he struggled awkwardly to stand and walk on his own, forgetting for a moment that he had only one good leg.

  “Easy, fella,” a very calm voice said. He was allowed to slump down against a wall. Something soft and confining, a mask, was placed over Carver’s mouth and nose. For a moment he panicked and tried to shake it from his face. “Breathe in, buddy, not too hard,” the calm voice instructed, making it all routine.

  Carver obeyed and instantly knew he was breathing in oxygen. He’d experienced the heady sensation before, during a police training session. He held the mask to his face himself, sucking in more of the clean, smokeless nectar.

  He fought off dizziness, then sat for about ten minutes taking in oxygen, his head thrown back. There was the very stuff of life, usually taken for granted.

  At last he experimentally removed the mask, drew a breath, and found that his respiratory system had returned more or less to normal.

  He began to take an interest beyond his survival. Two yellow fire engines were parked at angles in front of the motel. From one ran a jumble of hoses. Several uniformed firemen were busy at the motel-room door and window, feeding water into the room. One of the hoses ran around to the back of the building. A police car was parked next to the swimming pool, and a skinny redheaded man was in discussion with a tan-uniformed patrolman. There was an ambulance parked next to the police car. The roof lights on both vehicles were flashing red and blue, playing off the still water in the pool with a kaleidoscope effect.

  Carver used the wall to brace against and drew himself to his feet. A hand gently touched his arm; a fireman had been standing nearby to make sure he didn’t fall. The man had a round, concerned face, a wild shock of graying hair. The one who’d supplied the oxygen?