Tropical Heat

by John Lutz

“Why not tonight?” she asked, as if she were afraid.

  “A DEA agent named Burr wants to talk to me about Lujan.”

  “Drugs,” Edwina said. “They think everything in Florida is drugs.”

  “If you want to return to Del Moray tonight, you could get your rental car back and drive,” Carver said. She had left her Mercedes in the shop in Del Moray for service. He was afraid of the same thing she was; he wanted to make it clear to her that it made no difference to him if she drove back to Del Moray alone, tonight, without him.

  She seemed to consider the idea. Then she said, “No, that would be stupid. We’re both going in the same direction, and my room is already paid for.”

  As Carver turned the Olds onto the Tumble Inn’s parking lot, a black Lincoln coming out braked to make room for him, then turned left on the highway, traveling away from Solarville. The Lincoln’s windows were tinted, but not so darkly that Carver didn’t notice that the driver was the three-piece-suit type he’d seen earlier in the Tumble Inn restaurant, and his passenger, sitting as far away from him as possible on the front seat, was the executive-tailored blonde woman who’d been with him. Off to new diversions, Carver thought, wondering how it would be to have that kind of money, that kind of leisure. Lately he’d found himself envying other people too often.

  He parked the Olds halfway between his room and Edwina’s.

  Neither of them moved to get out of the car right away.

  “Do you want some coffee?” Carver asked. “Or a drink in the hotel lounge?”

  “No, it’s late. I’m tired.” The car’s engine ticked, cooling.

  For the first time Carver realized it was almost ten o’clock. They’d had a late supper, sat longer than he’d planned in The Flame. Against the dark sky, a huge full moon was plastered like a decoration at a dance, low on the haze above the swamp. Night insects were screaming as if they were dismayed about the world in general.

  “What time are we leaving tomorrow?” Edwina asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ll call you after I talk with Burr.”

  She worked the chrome handle, started to push open the door to get out of the car. Carver’s hand was on her shoulder before he knew it had moved, feeling the sharpness of bone and the warmth of flesh beneath the crisp white material of her blouse. There was something desperate in the action. She twisted on the seat and looked at him, confused and a little angry in the moonlight.

  “Not a good idea,” she said. “Wrong.” But her own hand rose and her fingertips brushed the side of Carver’s face, so lightly he might have imagined it.

  She got out of the car and he watched her walk to her door. She unlocked it and went inside without looking back.

  Carver put up the canvas top on the Olds, then went to the Tumble Inn lounge and sat nursing one beer for almost an hour, listening to an unbroken string of sad love songs wafting from unseen speakers. It was almost as if the bastards who’d set up the music knew.

  Not a good idea. Wrong.

  He didn’t feel like sleeping. But he didn’t feel like sitting there and drinking and feeling mawkish any longer either, so he left the lounge and walked back across the parking lot to his room, listening to the solemn sound of his soles crunching on gravel, the growling drag of his cane.

  It took as much willpower as he’d mustered in years not to stop and knock on Edwina’s door.

  But she was waiting for him in front of his door. So much for willpower.

  He touched her shoulder and she came to him, clung to him. He bowed his head, sought her eager mouth, found it with his own. Her grip on him tightened, and her body writhed tight against his.

  Somehow he managed to fit his key into the lock.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE NEXT MORNING, Carver studied Edwina over the rim of his coffee cup. She kept her eyes averted from him, her gaze downcast. She wasn’t wearing makeup; her face was fresh-scrubbed and her eyes were puffy. Her dark hair gave off a faint, clean perfumed scent and was drawn back from her forehead, parted and combed oh so neatly. She was wearing a denim skirt and a tailored blue pinstripe blouse, no jewelry. She might have been a nun in street clothes.

  But Carver remembered her fierce and desperate softness of the night before. He’d been awkward at first, with his lame leg, having to support and lever himself carefully with his good knee and his arms. But within a few minutes Edwina had made him forget all about the leg, about everything but her. Her intensity had amazed and delighted him, taken him away. His own intensity had shocked him. She was like a hand grenade tossed into his mind.

  But now it was Willis Davis again. He could see that. Or was it something more than Willis?

  How had she viewed the night before? As a lapse, a temporary surrender to desire? An unfortunate, never-to-be-repeated interlude?

  Carver knew that now he had every reason to find Willis Davis, to lay Willis to rest alive or dead in the mental landscape of Carver’s relationship with Edwina. Otherwise Willis would continue to haunt them, to sour what could be between them. Willis was one of the world’s spoilers, all right. Carver disliked him more than anyone he’d never met.

  “I’d use your toothbrush,” Carver said.

  Edwina stared at him. “What?”

  “That’s the test of true intimacy, if you’d use your partner’s toothbrush.”

  She didn’t smile. “That’s disgusting. And you’ve already brushed this morning. Finish your coffee.”

  They sat for a while without speaking in the cool motel restaurant. It was as if the night before had been cut from the calendar. Carver stared out the window at the cloudless sky, the morning heating up in the glare of slanted sunlight. At the edge of the swamp beyond the parking lot, Spanish moss and vines seemed to drip from the trees as if the branches were melting in the sun. Carver looked at his watch. Nine-thirty. Alex Burr had phoned half an hour ago. Carver was to meet him in town at eleven. He had time to kill; he knew how he wanted to kill it.

  “Do you want to take a walk?” he asked Edwina.

  “No, I’ll stay here for a while.”

  The implication was clear: Carver could take a walk. Alone. Down love’s rough road. With a pang of jealousy, he remembered how, the night before, she had called him Willis without realizing it.

  He thought he’d better not push Edwina any further. When the waitress wandered by, he waved her down and had her refill both coffee cups. Edwina didn’t look up, absently added cream and sugar to her coffee, and stirred. She seemed listless, somewhat confused beneath her brittleness.

  “What are you going to tell Burr?” she asked.

  “Whatever he wants to know. He’ll probably have the answers to everything he’s going to question me about anyway, or he wouldn’t ask. It’s the way the feds work.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Think of your tax form.”

  Daninger walked past the restaurant entrance from the lobby, looked in, and smiled tentatively at Carver. Everything was all right now, the smile said. Wasn’t it? Carver hoped Daninger didn’t come into the restaurant for added reassurance that the legal profession wasn’t going to pounce on him.

  Outside the window, along the line of ground-floor rooms, Carver saw Curt, wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt lettered Slow Is Better, sauntering along carrying a gas-powered weed trimmer. Carver wished people would run out of things to say on T-shirts.

  “Do you think I should be there when you talk to Burr?” Edwina asked.

  “No. I might be able to learn something from his questions. And he might not ask the same questions if he knows the extent of your relationship with Willis. DEA agents have the suspicious minds of witch burners who’ve been to college.”

  “You mean he might think I know where Willis is.”

  “He might. On the other hand, he might take the official view that Willis is dead. It’s Silverio Lujan who drew DEA attention. He was a Marielito who died an unnatural death. To the government, that means narcotics.”

  “
I know Willis wouldn’t be mixed up in drugs.”

  “You might be right.”

  The weed trimmer kicked into life behind the motel and began to chortle and buzz, like a gigantic insect in the swamp making determined passes at its prey. The wavering sound made the heat outside seem thicker, palpable as clear, still water.

  Edwina stood up without having touched her fresh cup of coffee.

  “Where are you going?” Carver asked. There were things he wanted to say to her, even though she wouldn’t listen. He preferred having her around in case she changed her mind.

  “To my room. To pack, to rest, to think.”

  He watched her walk from the restaurant. He didn’t ask her what she was going to think about. He knew. Willis.

  Carver thought about Laura. But not for long, and with lessened pain. She was definitely alive and had made it abundantly clear that she no longer wanted or needed him. Not like Willis and Edwina. Emotional ties had been cut, the loose ends knotted. That was the critical difference. Finality.

  He sipped his coffee and watched the shadows and sunlight sharpen in contrast on the parking lot.

  Alex Burr had borrowed Armont’s office to talk with Carver, but he acted as if it were his office. He was a trim and athletic-looking blond man who wore a black eye patch. The patch might have made him a romantic figure ten years ago, but his lean features had become a bit jowly with his forty-odd years, and there was a pouch beneath his visible unblinking blue eye. His hair was straight and professionally styled, worn longish to hide the straps from the eye patch. He’d removed his coat but hadn’t loosened his small, neat tie knot. His pants had sharp creases and his white dress shirt was spotless and starched and would do any laundry-detergent commercial proud. He hadn’t rolled up his sleeves; that would be giving in to mere heat. He reminded Carver of a middle-aged German duelist lost in time.

  But Burr didn’t say Achtung! or flip his gloves in Carver’s face. Instead he stood up behind Armont’s desk, smiled, extended a hand, and assured Carver he wouldn’t take up much of his time. Carver figured he had probably said that to people who were serving twenty years.

  They shook hands, and Burr waited while Carver sat down and rested his cane against the desk.

  Then Burr sat down slowly, with an odd familiarity, in Armont’s chair and said, “Do you have any idea why Lujan would try to kill you?”

  “No,” Carver said. “I was hoping you might.”

  “Had you had any contact with him before yesterday?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Burr began to rotate back and forth slightly in Armont’s swivel chair, as if it were something he did habitually every day. “We checked on you with the Orlando police. You come out clean, at least on the surface. Lujan doesn’t look clean by any standards. He was involved in smuggling schemes and drug dealing in the Miami area since the early eighties. The company he ran with is rough, but no rougher than Lujan. He liked to cut people. He killed before with a knife, we’re sure, though we could never nail him. The gang he was with used him to even scores. Nobody knows how many times. He wasn’t a big fish, but he was the kind that swam in a big pond and would lead you to larger fish. We’ve been keeping track of him.”

  “Then maybe you know what brought him to Solarville,” Carver said.

  “No, we don’t,” Burr admitted. His single blue eye blinked in annoyance. There was a sharp intensity about it from its task of doing double duty. “But if we knew what brought you here, maybe we could guess about Lujan.”

  “Was he mixed up in something current around Miami?” Carver asked.

  Burr smiled; it made him look positively dashing. “Guys like Lujan are always mixed up in something current. He was a Marielito.”

  “I thought we’d sent the worst of them back to Cuba last year,” Carver said.

  “Not the worst and the smartest. They slipped through the net early and set up shop. They’re organized. They’re into drugs, prostitution, gambling, extortion; the gamut of crime, anything illegal and profitable. But especially drugs. And they’re bad people, Carver. Bad beyond belief. Narcotics has always been a rough business, but now it’s rougher.”

  “Do you know who Lujan worked for in south Florida?”

  “He worked for whoever wanted somebody killed.”

  Carver thought about that. This knife for hire. It reduced the odds on Lujan’s attack on him being a coincidence, unrelated to his mission in Solarville, almost to nil.

  Burr leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk. “Now, about what brought you to Solarville and led to a dead Marielito. . . .”

  Carver told him about everything, including the missing hundred thousand dollars. He had no choice. Burr was federal and not to be crossed. Too many of these guys suffered from the Eliot Ness syndrome.

  None of it quite tied in with Lujan. When he had finished talking, Carver sat and watched Burr consider it all. The blue eye caught the light from the window and looked perplexed.

  “Lujan might have come here to meet the Malone brothers,” Carver suggested. “Snowbirds of a feather. . . .”

  “We know about the Malones,” Burr said. “Lujan was small-time, but even he wouldn’t get involved with a couple of backwater bunglers like the Malones.”

  “Big oaks from little yokels grow,” Carver said.

  Burr frowned at him. Apparently he wasn’t one for puns or maxims. But that was to be expected: The DEA didn’t joke much. “It might be a good idea if you left Solarville,” he said. The line about the oaks must have done it.

  “I’m planning to, as soon as we’re finished with this conversation. There isn’t much I can do here now.”

  “Except maybe finally get burned or stabbed to death.”

  “Had Lujan ever been a firebug?”

  Burr shook his head. “Never. That bothers me.” Like Carver, he couldn’t quite see the Tumble Inn fire as an accident, even though there was nothing to rule out that possibility.

  Each man knew what the other was thinking. “Not Lujan,” Burr said. “He liked knives, not flames. What fire does for a pyromaniac, knives did for Lujan.”

  Carver nodded. He understood. If the motel fire had been deliberate, probably someone other than Silverio Lujan had set it. This was a world of specialists.

  “Where are you going when you leave Solarville?” Burr asked.

  “Del Moray.”

  Burr leaned over the desk and gave Carver a white business card with several phone numbers engraved on it in official-looking small black print. “We want to know what you know, when you know it. Understand?”

  “Sure,” Carver said. He knew there was no need to tell Burr how to get in touch with him. He angled the cane straight down, set the tip, and levered himself to his feet. “Anything else?”

  “Not for now.”

  Carver knew Burr was watching him limp from the office, wondering how a cripple like Carver could have killed a hard-ass Marielito. Wondering a lot of things. Some of them the same things Carver was wondering.

  CHAPTER 19

  ON THE ROAD BACK to the motel, Carver didn’t notice the flashing red and blue lights in his rearview mirror. There was too much glare from the sun.

  The sudden wail of a siren, abruptly cut off as if a hand had been clamped over a screaming mouth, startled him.

  He checked the Olds’s rearview mirror and saw a police car inches off his back bumper, its lightbar flashers rotating on its roof but simply not up to overpowering the intense tropical sunlight. Only when the cars passed through dappled shade were the flashing lights even noticeable.

  Carver braked the Olds and swerved to the side of the road, feeling the car’s right front wheel go off the gravel and sink slightly into marshy ground beyond the shoulder.

  The police car had pulled in behind the Olds, as if it had been towed there by a string between the two vehicles. Carver sat quietly and watched it in the mirror.

  Chief Armont got out of the car, hitched up his belt, and walked up
to lean on the passenger-side door of the Olds. The Olds’s canvas top was up; Armont crouched to peer in at Carver.

  “Am I going to get a ticket,” Carver asked, “or is this just a warning?”

  Armont’s beefy face was flushed, perspiring. It hadn’t taken him long after getting out of the air-conditioned cruiser to break into a sweat. “Neither,” he said. “I just want to talk to you. I knew you were leaving, so I figured I could catch you here driving back from your conversation with the DEA.”

  “I could have hung around your office and waited for you,” Carver said. “If it’s still your office and not Burr’s.”

  Armont chuckled. “Assertive bastard, ain’t he?” He settled down more comfortably with his elbows on the car door, where the window rolled down into it; that would leave nasty grooves in his arms, Carver thought.

  “The fact is,” Armont said, “I got some information about twenty minutes ago that might interest you. That’s why I decided to try to catch up with you here, before you were on the road back north. It concerns our departed friend Silverio Lujan.”

  “Why don’t you get in the car and sit down?” Carver suggested.

  Armont shook his head; perspiration dripped from his chin. “Just as soon stand out here.” He folded his gnarled hands. “A few days ago the University of Florida called my office. They were worried about a naturalist from their faculty, a Professor Raymond Mackenzie. Mackenzie left last week to spend some time here in the Everglades, cataloging wildlife, or whatever naturalists do. He was supposed to phone a female student of his who he lives with, but he never called. She alerted the university, kept bugging them to inquire and stir up some kind of action. I drove out and found his campsite two days ago. His four-wheel-drive Jeep was parked next to his little camper trailer, but he wasn’t there. There were signs that he’d left suddenly some time ago. A rotting, half-eaten meal; the butane cookstove switched on, and out of fuel. Mackenzie hasn’t turned up since at his campsite, or been seen by anyone around here.”

  Carver waited patiently for Armont to get to the point.