Bloodfire

by John Lutz

  Carver said, “He call you Mr. Gomez in private?”

  “Not in private,” Gomez said, “but this is business, so he’s being a bit formal.” He spread his hands palms out. “Just business, being done so you keep outa my personal life.”

  Hirsh said, “I think you made your point, Mr. Gomez.”

  Gomez said, “Sure hope so. Have I, Carver?”

  “I feel we know each other better. But don’t look for me to invite you over for barbecue.”

  “Or me to ask you to go fishing,” Gomez said. “We don’t need to be friends, just fucking understand one another. That’s so if you are in any kinda contact with my wife, you break it and stay away from her. She’s got a fatal disease called Roberto Gomez, and if you get near her, you’re sure to catch it.”

  Carver said, “I understand you, Roberto.”

  “Fine. Good. That means I accomplished the purpose of this visit. ’Cause I understand you, Carver. You’re a hard-ass, but you ain’t fool enough to dive into a blender for a no-good cunt like Beth. Mother Teresa maybe, but not Beth.”

  Hirsh said, “Or maybe Madonna.”

  “Huh! Huh!” Gomez turned and swaggered toward the limo. He opened a rear door and climbed in as Hirsh moved to follow. Old pro Hirsh walked as easily backward as forward, still looking disinterested and keeping the Uzi aimed in the general direction of Carver.

  He folded his tall body into the back of the limo after Gomez, making the same soft grunting sound he’d made when he’d climbed into the truck. He pulled the door shut after him. The long, gleaming car spun its rear tires and threw sand and rock as it drove away.

  Carver looked over at the Olds. It had stopped steaming. He limped to it and slammed the hood shut. The hollow clash of steel reminded him of the barrel, causing his stomach to lurch and a rage that had been smoldering in him to flare into something white-hot and constant.

  He hobbled around the mess he’d made on the ground when he’d vomited, then he clomped inside the cottage and rinsed out his mouth. He drank a cold Budweiser while he sat in his creaking director’s chair and trembled. The barrel with the body in it might even now be sinking toward the ocean bottom, plunging faster and faster as sea water poured through the bullet holes.

  Carver shook off the ghastly vision, but it wasn’t easy. He drank another beer before he phoned Beth Gomez and told her he’d work for her.

  18

  CARVER HAD JUST HUNG up on Beth when McGregor called. His irritating voice oozed over the line and for some reason reminded Carver of the body rotting in the barrel. Corruption speaking:

  “Seen Roberto Gomez lately, ass-face?”

  “Not since we had our talk,” Carver said. Lying to McGregor wasn’t lying at all, more like tricking the devil out of possessing your soul.

  “Well, some DEA agent name of Strait came by to talk to me about him.”

  Carver watched a large and wicked-looking wasp droning against the window that looked out on the sea, restrained by a barrier it would never understand. “Why would Strait wanna talk to you?”

  “ ’Cause of you, Carver. Your office is in Del Moray, and that means Gomez might turn up from time to time in my jurisdiction. The DEA keeps tabs on shitballs like Gomez, case they fuck up and leave themselves open for arrest. If that happens, Strait wanted to make sure he has the Del Moray department’s full cooperation.”

  “And you assured him you were in his corner?”

  “Why not? Lying to the DEA ain’t a cardinal sin. Then we talked about you. He thinks you’re an asshole just like I do.”

  “Well, that’s the DEA for you.”

  “Oh, I dunno, in some ways they’re pretty sharp.”

  Carver said, “They usually dress nice.”

  “I think they might be thinking straight here, Carver. There being an established connection between you and Gomez, he’s almost certain to return, like flies to shit.”

  “Except I no longer work for him. We don’t have anything to do with each other.”

  “You’ll ’scuse me if I don’t rule out the possibility you might fib, won’t you?”

  Carver said, “I don’t excuse you for anything.”

  “How characteristically cruel. And I was gonna inform you Gomez talked to the Orlando police. He gave them his ironclad alibi. Played dumb behind his high-price attorney. Acted shocked about his murdered sister-in-law. And he was damned worried about his missing wife. He thinks whoever killed the sister wants to kill her. Not illogical, is it?”

  Carver said, “Not at all. That’s what I think, too. But I’m out of it, no longer even an interested party.”

  “Just make sure you get interested if you see Gomez again or learn anything about him or the missing wife. You ever see a picture of Mrs. Gomez?”

  A test. “Sure. Gomez showed me a snapshot when he hired me.

  “A nigger bitch. Makes you wonder, huh? I mean, a guy with all that money, he can have any woman he wants, and he mixes it up in the sack with a black cunt.”

  “My guess is he loves her.”

  “What makes you say that?” McGregor acted as if the possibility had never entered his mind. Probably it hadn’t.

  “He’s searching for her, isn’t he?”

  “Like he’d search for a missing bag of coke. She’s something belonged to him that disappeared, that’s all.”

  Most likely McGregor was right about that, Carver thought, the supposed dead son aside. Men like Roberto Gomez didn’t behave along the lines of Ward Cleaver.

  McGregor said, “She probably knows lotsa tricks. Gives a great spit-shine, whatever her color. Anyway, it don’t rub off, and she’s a looker, nigger or not. Like that Vanessa Williams, used to be Miss America till she fucked up. Now, I’d go for some of that in a minute.”

  “The department’s got you in the wrong job,” Carver said. “You oughta be in race relations.”

  “Don’t imply I’m a bigot, scuzzball. Maybe you don’t like me just because I’m pale and blond. My only interest in Elizabeth Gomez’s color is it should make her easier to find. This is a cunt used to the big money, and a black woman like that’ll stand out like a raisin on white bread most places where big money congregates. She ain’t gonna go to ground in no inner-city slum with the rest of her kind. Not for long, anyway.”

  Carver said, “Maybe she sings gospel.”

  “She don’t. I checked. She’s just another greedy ghetto black bitch, interested in getting rich and getting laid, in that order.”

  “You sure? She went out and got some education. She’s an honor student.”

  “Probably fucked for her grades. They’re all alike.”

  “Black women?”

  “Women. Even Edwina Talbot, your real-estate lady friend. Someday you’ll learn.”

  “Too bad you and Sigmund Freud never met.”

  “The sonuvabitch was alive, I’d run him in for writing pornography. I wasted enough time talking to you, fuckface. You remember what I said. And take care of yourself.”

  Carver was astounded. “You concerned about my welfare?”

  “Fucking right. I want you to stay alive at least long enough to lead me to Roberto Gomez when he’s got his pants down.”

  As soon as McGregor had hung up, Carver tapped the cradle button for a dial tone, then punched out Edwina’s number with his forefinger.

  She still wasn’t home. He tried Quill Realty again, and the receptionist told him Edwina wasn’t there, then interrupted herself to say she was at that moment walking into the office. She asked him to wait, Ms. Talbot would take the call at her desk.

  Carver waited. The wasp had given up on the window and was circling in the middle of the room. Now and then it darted angrily almost straight up, then struck the ceiling and spiraled lower. Carver could hear it droning. He wished it would go back to the window.

  A minute later there were a couple of clicks on the line and Edwina’s voice said, “Fred?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “The
receptionist recognized your voice.” Edwina sounded harried, annoyed that she’d been interrupted on the job. “I can’t make it tonight for dinner,” she said.

  “I wasn’t going to ask you.”

  “Oh?”

  “I called to tell you I have to leave town again for a while. I’m not sure for how long.”

  “Where you going?”

  “It’s better if you don’t know. I don’t want you connected with this in any way.”

  “More melodrama.”

  Carver thought about the corpse in the barrel and said, “Just like a movie.” Except with the smell and the horror and the forever sleep of real death.

  She paused, then said, “I’ll have to give Jack Lester my answer on the Hawaii job.”

  “Yeah, I guess you will.”

  “Fred?”

  He felt his throat constrict. He couldn’t tell her he didn’t want her to go. Not if she wanted to go. “I’ll call you soon as I get back.”

  “I’ll be waiting.” She hung up hard enough to hurt his ear.

  He unpacked the dirty clothes from his suitcase, from his short stay in Fort Lauderdale. After tossing them in a pile on the bed, he stuffed the suitcase with clean clothes.

  He dug an old plastic milk bottle from the trash, rinsed out the sour-smelling white residue, then used the bottle to fill the Olds’s radiator with water. The engine had cooled, but the split hose was still dribbling. He tied a rag around the split. Should do for a while.

  After washing his hands, he put the suitcase in the trunk and drove to a service station on the highway, where he had the leaking radiator hose replaced. The mechanic was good; the job took even less than the fifteen minutes Carver figured he would have spent on it.

  Carver drove to Edwina’s house on the coast and let himself in the back door with his key. He made his way to the bedroom where they’d made love so many times. The window was raised a few inches and he could hear the ocean. He limped to Edwina’s dresser and removed the top drawer.

  A large, folded yellow envelope was fastened to the back of the drawer with masking tape. Inside the envelope was Carver’s blue steel Colt .38 automatic.

  He removed the gun and left the empty envelope taped to the drawer. Put the drawer back, then checked the Colt’s clip and mechanism, smelling oil and metal as the gun snicked heavily in his hand. Making sure the chamber was empty and the safety on, he replaced the loaded clip and tucked the Colt in his waistband beneath his shirt. Death waiting to be used.

  Before he left, he called Melanie Beame’s house and talked briefly to Beth Gomez. Told her he was on his way.

  19

  CARVER DROVE INTO Fort Lauderdale and ran a few red lights. Cut suddenly up a one-way street, one eye on the road, the other on the rearview mirror. He spent fifteen minutes doing that kind of thing, being unpredictable as if he’d gone mad from the summer heat, until he was sure the Olds wasn’t being followed.

  Melanie Beame answered the door of the tiny frame house on Wayfare Lane. She glanced behind her as if waiting for some kind of signal before letting Carver limp inside.

  Beth Gomez was standing in the middle of the living room. She was wearing Levi’s and a yellow blouse, looking beautiful and fresh-scrubbed, her hair pulled back and tied with a yellow ribbon. If McGregor ever saw her in person, he’d know why Roberto Gomez had coveted her above other women.

  She’d followed Carver’s instructions and packed immediately and lightly. At her feet, as if worshipping her, lay a gray tweed Gucci suitcase.

  She said, “This is Melanie, Carver.”

  Carver almost blurted out that they’d met, then he remembered the only time he’d seen Melanie Beame was through binoculars while spying on her in this very room. The bookcase cluttered with stereo equipment, the brown easy chair, the table and lamp, all looked familiar yet somehow different now that he was among them. As if objects in a painting had acquired dimension because he, Carver, had become a figure in the scene.

  Melanie Beame looked the same, though. A too-thin redhead with a cadaverous yet undeniably pretty face. Carver couldn’t help thinking she appeared as if she were still being ravaged by drugs. He told her he was pleased to meet her, then turned to Beth and asked if she was ready to leave.

  “Not yet,” she said. She walked to a fancy maple cradle in a corner and bent over it gracefully. The look on her face was something.

  The son of Beth and Roberto Gomez must have been sleeping. She whispered to him softly, cooing motherese that Carver probably wouldn’t have understood even if he’d been close enough to hear. He looked over at Melanie Beame, who was staring at Beth with red-rimmed blue eyes that glistened with tears. Carver hoped she wouldn’t start crying. That might set Beth off. Not to mention young Adam.

  Beth straightened up and turned to face Carver. Wiped her eyes daintily with a long and tapered forefinger. “You sure we can’t take him?”

  Carver said, “He’ll be safer here. And you know how difficult it’d be to care for him and avoid Roberto at the same time.”

  “He’s right, Beth,” Melanie said, moving closer to Beth and speaking softly so as not to wake Adam.

  She had on peculiarly scented perfume, Carver thought. Then he realized it was talcum powder he smelled. It had been years since he’d been around infants. His own. He didn’t like to think of those years. His own son was dead; he hadn’t seen his daughter since last fall.

  Melanie said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him as if he were my own.”

  Beth curled her fingers into fists, probably digging her long red nails into her palms. “Oh, I know that, Melanie. But, Christ, this is hard!”

  “But it’s the right thing to do, Beth. Adam’ll be fine; you just take care of yourself. Let Carver, here, take care of you. Know what I mean?”

  Beth gnawed her lower lip. Nodded.

  Carver limped over to the cradle and looked down at the dark, tiny infant huddled in a corner among scrunched-up blankets. Adam Gomez had a bald head except for a swatch of black hair over his left ear. He was curled on his side; Carver wondered if there was a similar patch of hair over the concealed right ear. He commented again that Adam was a good-looking kid, and meant it. The baby seemed to have all its parts and nothing jumped out as ugly, anyway.

  Beth had moved over and was standing near Melanie, her hands still balled into tight brown fists. She took a few steps toward the cradle, then stopped as if she’d come to the edge of a drop. Her shoulders lifted and expanded as she drew in breath.

  After a few seconds she exhaled in a low sigh, spun around, and with an obvious effort of will snatched up her suitcase and walked to the door without looking back at her child.

  Melanie caught her at the door and the two women embraced. Melanie was crying now, but Beth seemed to have control of herself. She knew better than anyone that this was life or death for her, and one world or another for Adam.

  Melanie said, “Goddammit, Carver, you better take good care of this lady.”

  Carver said, “Things’ll work out.” Though he wasn’t so sure.

  “You have my phone number,” Melanie reminded Beth. “You need to put your mind at ease about Adam, call me anytime.”

  Beth swallowed hard, tried to speak but merely croaked. She bowed her head and moved out onto the porch.

  She walked slowly across the street so that Carver could keep up. He took her suitcase from her, unlocked the Olds’s cavernous trunk, and hoisted it inside. Got his own travel-scarred leather suitcase from the backseat and laid it next to the tweed Gucci. It looked like a worn-out bum who’d sneaked into bed with a countess. There was an airline luggage tag attached to the handle of Beth’s suitcase, with her name and address scrawled on it.

  Carver tugged at the tag until the elastic loop attaching it to the suitcase handle snapped. The damn thing whipped around and stung the back of his hand. He crumpled the stiff paper tag and tossed it out of sight in the shadows of the trunk, then slammed the trunk closed.

&nb
sp; He opened the passenger-side door for Beth. She seemed to expect it. Sliding her shapely rear backward into the Olds, she pressed her knees tightly together and swung her long legs up and sideways.

  Wondering if women practiced getting into cars that way, Carver closed the door. He limped around the Olds and lowered himself in behind the steering wheel, then bent forward and twisted the key in the ignition. The powerful engine ground, caught, and roared. It had barely caught its mechanical breath when he shoved the transmission lever into Drive. The tires eeeped! on hot pavement. He figured the sooner they got away from Wayfare Lane, the better jump they’d have on the future.

  Beth couldn’t help it; she glanced back at the house as the car pulled away.

  Carver peeked, too, in the mirror.

  Melanie was standing on the porch and waving as if she’d never see her friend again.

  And maybe she wouldn’t.

  20

  HE TOOK INTERSTATE 95 north, then cut west. The top was up on the Olds, but the air conditioner wasn’t working, so all the windows were cranked down. Air crashed and swirled through the car and ballooned out the canvas top as if it were inflatable. Carver drove fast, eyes fixed on the highway that narrowed in perspective to a thin, pinched break in the flat landcape wavering in the heat.

  Almost shouting to be heard over the boom of the wind, Beth said, “Where we going on this date?”

  She’d taken a shot at humor even in her predicament; Carver liked that. He continued staring straight ahead, both hands on the steering wheel. “Place called Dark Glades.”

  She digested the information. “That a town?”

  “It thinks so.” While on a case a few years ago, Carver had stayed in the swamp town of Solarville and thought it was backward and isolated. But on the drive back to civilization he’d passed through Dark Glades, and all of a sudden Solarville seemed progressive.

  Beth knew they were driving toward the Everglades. “This Dark Glades one of those backwater swamp places?”

  Carver said, “It won’t remind you of Miami.”

  “Not the kinda surroundings I been used to, Carver.”