Tropical Heat

by John Lutz

  The rhythmic, rushing sound of the surf relaxed Carver. He was still breathing a bit rapidly from his swim, and his eyes were half closed as he leaned back in the webbed aluminum chair in the shade of the porch roof.

  Everything was under control, sort of. At least put in abeyance for a while. He’d aired out the cottage, watered the plants, and found it easier than he’d anticipated to get back into his therapeutic swimming routine. He’d talked to Desoto and Burr the day before, called Ernie Franks and told him there was nothing substantial to report, and left Edwina preoccupied with catching up on real-estate business. She’d told him there were contracts on two of the houses she had listed, and she was sure she had a client for a third. She hardly had time for Carver. He was pleased to see this healthy streak of greed in her.

  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.

  “I lost the eye in Vietnam,” Burr said, experienced and sensitive enough to suspect what Carver was thinking. “Stepped on a Claymore mine.” He crossed his arms and looked directly at Carver. “What about the leg? How did it happen?”

  “A holdup kid’s bullet,” Carver said. “I got careless. I should have checked the back room in a store that was being robbed. A kid with a gun was back there.”

  “Don’t flog yourself about it,” Burr advised.

  “I don’t,” Carver said. “Everybody gets careless now and then, and usually gets away with it. My timing was off.”

  Screaming and squawking from the beach made both men pause and watch a couple of gulls fight over a dead something that had washed up onto the sand. They watched until one of the gulls flapped away with an object grasped in its beak. The defeated gull flew off in search of easier offerings from the sea.

  “The way of life, huh?” Burr said.

  “Some lives.”

  “The way it is in our line of work, with the people we deal with. Maybe the way it is in most lines of work.”

  Carver wasn’t sure about that. He didn’t think most assembly-line workers had to worry about being met on the road by a man with a knife. Burr walked over and stepped down off the porch. Carver envied him his two good legs.

  “Don’t be careless again,” Burr cautioned. “You might be onto something bigger than you know. Be on the alert, think before you jump, be careful.” He made it sound like a Boy Scout oath.

  Carver nodded to Burr and watched him round the corner of the cabin. A few minutes later a car engine about a hundred yards away racketed to life.

  As Carver listened to Burr drive up the road toward the coast highway, he understood why the DEA man had parked so far away and come up on the house quietly. He wanted to demonstrate to Carver that his advice was sound. Be careful; you’re not as secure as you might think.

  Carver decided to be careful. But he knew that being careful wouldn’t have made any difference on the road with Silverio Lujan. People like Burr fooled themselves about how much control they could exercise over events. So much of what happened in life, good or bad, was the result of luck. Or if you weren’t a gambler, you could call it fate. Carver didn’t think it made much difference what it was called; people had to learn to fend it off or roll with it in order to survive.

  He went inside out of the sun, sat for a while gazing at the sea beyond his hanging plants, then called Edwina and made a date for lunch.

  CHAPTER 24

  CARVER SHOWERED, THEN dressed in worn jeans, gray sweat-socks, his moccasins, and a black sportshirt with a riotous pattern of colorful tropical birds splashed over it. Edwina had an afternoon appointment to show some citrus-grove property outside of Del Moray, so she and Carver were going to meet where she recommended, a restaurant called Orange We All, on Highway 17 near Sanford.

  Orange We All was quintessential central Florida. It was built to resemble a huge half-orange, complete with a stem and artificial leaves on top to hide the air-conditioning unit, and had laughing Disneylike characters painted all around it halfway up.

  As he parked the Olds in the crowded lot and saw a family with half a dozen kids tromp into the restaurant, Carver had misgivings about agreeing to Edwina’s choice of a place to eat. He liked kids, but he didn’t care for the idea of eating lunch within range of a two-year-old’s highchair. His own kids, Fred Jr. and Anne, had seen spoons more as launching devices than eating utensils at that age. Carver remembered thinking that was cute, but that had been Fred Jr. and Anne.

  Edwina had gotten there ahead of him and had somehow secured a quiet booth near the back of the restaurant. She had on the gray tailored business suit she’d worn when Carver had first seen her, and a large blue leather briefcase was next to her leaning against the back of the seat. The attractive, modern career woman, taking time from her busy schedule to meet someone for lunch. She looked like an ad for The Wall Street Journal. What would the conversation cover today? Carver wondered. Missing lovers, the sweet agony of passion, or tax-free municipals?

  “Do they serve orange juice here?” he asked, sliding into the seat across the table from her.

  Edwina smiled. “And good food. And they see that adults by themselves are seated away from the kids. You shouldn’t judge things solely on the merits of their exteriors.”

  “You and Burr are throwing worldly philosophy at me today too fast to comprehend,” Carver said.

  She sat forward, interested. “Where did you see Burr?”

  “At my place this morning. He wanted to warn me that what we’re involved in might be a big drug operation, with accompanying danger. He thinks Willis might be a low-level player in a high-stakes game.”

  A large-busted young waitress in an orange uniform and wearing a hat with Mickey Mouse ears on it approached the table. A balloon twisted into the shape of some animal Carver couldn’t identify bobbed after her with helium buoyancy on the end of a long string attached to her belt. No wonder the place had tourist trade.

  Edwina ordered the Dieter’s Delite. Carver asked for a hamburger, French fries, and something called an Orange Sloshy.

  “I bring clients here sometimes,” Edwina said. “I’ve closed several deals at this table.”

  “It’s probably the Orange Sloshy that gets them,” Carver said.

  Edwina ignored his wisecrack. She was looking at him with an interest he hadn’t seen before in her gray eyes. The intensity of that look scared Carver. It suggested that they had turned a corner. Now their fates were linked. She was a little bit afraid, too, and curious about where this was all carrying them. The three of them, Carver, Edwina . . . Willis. Or was he gradually displacing Willis, becoming what Willis had been to Edwina? Willis the perfect, gentle lover; she’d moaned his name beneath Carver. Carver didn’t want to be Willis, not to that extent. Is that where this would end? How it would end?

  “He’s a thief,” Carver said softly. She knew who he was talking about. Willis. Always Willis. “He ran out on you; he didn’t have to do that.”

  “I don’t know the circumstances. You don’t, either. Maybe he had to leave. Maybe he did it for me.” She didn’t sound convinced. “I have to give him the benefit of the doubt,” she said earnestly.

  “He doesn’t deserve it,” Carver said.

  She sighed, toyed with the menu, then placed it back in its metal clasp at the side of the booth, near the miniature orange salt and pepper shakers. “I should have guessed it would go wrong for Willis and me,” she said. “There were signs, but I couldn’t see them, not knowing what I know now.”

  “Signs involving drugs?”

  “No. Nothing like that. Like the time Ernie Franks caught him going through his, Franks’s, desk. That happened right after Willis started working at Sun South. He explained to Franks that he had a customer on the line and needed some information fast on one of the new units, thought he’d find it in a hurry in one of Franks’s drawers. Franks believed him; he’s kind of a gullible sweet bastard despite the business he’s in. I wanted to believe him too. And Willis is convincing. Nobody thought much about it after a while. Then there was the time Willis disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Only for a few days, not long before he moved in with me. He stood up some customers, cost the company at least one deal. Franks was furious, but Willis, being Willis, was able to smooth things over.”

 
“How? What did he tell Franks?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. He told me he had to go to Miami unexpectedly.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “No. Only that it concerned some past business. You see, Willis went to Miami before he and I . . . became close.”

  “I thought you became lovers before he went to work at Sun South.”

  “We had.” She gazed directly at Carver. “We became close later.”

  The tone of her voice said it even if the words didn’t: The closeness of complete commitment was what had come later, the absorption of self. Desperate love, like in one of the old movies Desoto watched. Some women still thought that way. And men. They shouldn’t. Carver had found that out. People continued to buy into that kind of thinking, that kind of love, because they had no choice. The idea made Carver uneasy.

  “Maybe when Willis disappeared he saw some people he didn’t want anyone to realize he knew,” Carver said. “People on the wrong side of the law, in the drug game.”

  “Burr would think that,” Edwina said.

  The waitress brought their food. On the way back behind the counter, she paused and gave the balloon animal to a squirming preschooler at one of the tables. The kid promptly stuck it with a fork, popping it. Mom frowned. Dad thought it was funny. Family life.

  Edwina was right, Carver decided. The hamburger was surprisingly good, the French fries were crisp, and the Orange Sloshy was delicious in its waxed cup.

  They ate silently for a while, the way people do when they’re hungry and the food is simple and up to taste.

  Carver watched Edwina across the table. Her dark hair was carefully brushed and arranged and she was wearing a minimum of makeup. She didn’t seem aware that Carver was studying her, but he knew the mask of Edwina could be unreadable. What was the mask hiding? What wasn’t she telling him?

  “When will you be finished working tonight?” he asked.