Bloodfire

by John Lutz

  “That’s the idea.”

  “You think Roberto’s not smart enough to figure I’d try to fool him by running someplace I wouldn’t ordinarily go?”

  “Got nothing to do with smart,” Carver told her. “Roberto will assume you think like he does, with the gut instead of the brain. He wouldn’t stay in a dump and eat fish heads to stay outa harm’s way, because he’s too arrogant. He’s got no idea you wouldn’t react the same way.”

  “You say fish heads?”

  “Figure of speech. Anyway, this makes sense. Does Roberto underestimate you because you’re a woman?”

  “Sure. It’s built into a guy like that.”

  “Uh-huh. That what made you think you could get by with this in the first place?”

  “That’s part of it,” she answered immediately, as if she’d given the matter a lot of thought. “The other part was pure desperation.” She flexed her long, dark fingers, as if they’d become stiff and needed the knuckles loosened. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her glance over at him. “You underestimate me because I’m a woman, Carver?”

  “Probably.”

  Beth was silent for a long time. Then she said, “You’re most likely right with this choice of hideaways, Carver, but I’m not gonna like this.”

  “You might change your mind. It’s rustic.”

  “Back in Chicago, rustic means old.”

  He said, “Old’s what I want us to live to be.”

  They reached Dark Glades just before nightfall. Even in the soft dusk, the flat-roofed wooden buildings lining Cypress Avenue, the main street, didn’t seem rustic. They looked ancient and ready to collapse beneath the weight of their years. The swamp humidity had turned whatever colors the wooden buildings had been painted to a dreary, mottled gray. The only brick buildings Carver saw were the combination fire department and police headquarters, a small restaurant, and the office of an auto-repair shop with a couple of gas pumps standing outside it like bored sentries. The Olds was the only vehicle moving on the roughly paved street. Several old cars and pickup trucks were parked on the gravel shoulder or angled in front of some of the small shops. Half a dozen pedestrians, the men rough-looking in cut-off shirts with jeans or denim overalls, stood slouched on the edge of the road and stared at the Olds. A strange car usually meant fishermen from outside town, or maybe some lost motorist. Or trouble.

  Beth said, “Pissant place don’t even have a McDonald’s.” Though she spoke better English than Carver did, she’d let herself ease into occasional echoes of street dialect on the hot and exhausting drive. She was more comfortable with him now. Less guarded. Maybe she liked him. He wondered why he thought that. What difference did it make?

  “There’s where we can dine out,” he said, motioning with his head toward the restaurant.

  “I dunno if I wanna eat at a place called Wiff’s,” Beth said dubiously.

  “It’s ‘Whiffy’s,’ ” Carver corrected her. “See, part of the neon sign’s burned out, but it’s lettered there on the window.”

  “Yeah, right near the dusty fern.” She pointed at a leaning clapboard building with a sign over its door. “Looka that, there’s moss on City Hall.”

  Carver looked. Sure enough, the flimsy structure was the city hall, and sure enough there was a greenish film of moss near the roof on the north side. There was also moss on a statue of what looked like a World War I doughboy standing erect and aiming a rifle. Might even have been moss on the old man slumped on the bench near the statue.

  As they neared the edge of town, the buildings became even more rundown, and many of them were up on stilts and in the shade of towering cypress trees.

  Beth said, “Must flood a lot around here, people gotta live up in the air.”

  “Keeps the alligators out,” Carver told her.

  The road outside town became narrower and paved with gravel. It was raised a few feet above the level of the swamp water, flanked by tall saw grass and trees with exposed, gnarled roots that resembled massive, bare vines. Insects droned almost deafeningly and the air was suddenly cooler.

  Carver saw a wooden sign up ahead; the Casa Grande Motel was where he’d remembered it. Soon another sign came into view, shaped like a Spanish castle and outlined in neon.

  As he made a sharp right turn and parked near the office, Beth said, “I can’t like alligators.”

  “Takes another alligator,” Carver said.

  When he switched off the engine, she seemed surprised. She must have thought he’d driven into the lot to turn around. She studied the motel through the windshield, then said, “Oh-oh. This it?”

  “It,” he confirmed. He knew how she must feel. The Casa Grande was a U-shaped stucco building with mock-Spanish decor. Ornate wrought-iron window grilles, a sun-faded red tile roof, heavy wooden doors. It had been white but was now a grayish color splotched with yellow where the stucco had been patched; webbed with cracks and exposed lathing where broken stucco had been ignored. Now that the car’s motor wasn’t running, the screaming and grinding of insects was even louder. The swamp grew close to the back and sides of Casa Grande, seeming to loom over it as if waiting for it to surrender to time and vine so the ground on which the motel sat could be reclaimed. There was a battered green Chevy pickup parked near the farthest end unit, a big, dark Harley-Davidson motorcycle parked close to it. Near the center of the low stucco building, a rapacious vine laden with dark red blossoms seemed to be gradually but surely devouring the building. It had once been confined to a trellis, but now only rotting, splintered remnants of fragile wood spindles remained visible, here and there protruding like bleached bones from the mass of waxy-looking leaves. Carver sensed Beth’s apprehension. He said, “It’s nicer inside.”

  “Ever stay here?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “Then how do you know it’s nicer inside?”

  “Must be.”

  He opened the car door and set the tip of his cane in the gravel. Levered himself up and out from behind the steering wheel so he was standing beside the car. The warm air was humid enough to grab by the handful. It carried the fetid, sulfurous smell of the swamp. Carver glanced around at the green isolation. He bent down over the cane slightly so he could see Beth, still inside the car, and said, “I’ll go make sure they have a vacancy.”

  “You taking any bets?”

  He ignored her and limped toward the office. He was perspiring heavily and his clothes were stuck to him. A film of sweat clung to his face like a mask. A cloud of gnats followed him; he had to wave them away from his eyes and nose.

  A large black-and-yellow butterfly of a type he’d never seen lay fluttering feebly on the wooden steps to the office door, being devoured by huge red ants. Carver stepped on the unfortunate insect to end its misery, then kicked the mess, including some of the ants, aside. A weathered sign on the office door said FREE COFFEE AND DONUTS EVERY MORNING. He pushed the door open with his cane, gripped the wooden doorjamb, and moved inside.

  The office was small, painted dead white, probably to make it appear larger. There was a single, blue vinyl-covered chair, a table with a Mr. Coffee on it, and a wooden wall rack of the sort usually stuffed with tourist brochures. This rack was empty.

  The registration desk looked homemade out of cheap lumber. It was painted white, like the walls, over a rough sandpaper job, and had a top covered with speckled linoleum. An old GE air conditioner mounted high on the back wall had the office cold enough to chill beer, and the bearded little man behind the desk sat as perfectly still as if he’d been frozen. But his eyes moved, watching Carver.

  Carver said, “Got a vacancy?”

  The bearded guy smiled and stood up. Or down. When he slid off his stool, his chin was barely higher than the desk. He said, “A single?”

  “No, my friend’s in the car. Two rooms next to each other, with a connecting door.”

  The man gave Carver a neutral look. “No hitch, I can do that. Thirty a night each.”

  “Good e
nough.”

  “Got a credit card?”

  “I’ll pay cash in advance. We’ll be here about a week. Maybe longer.” Carver reached in his pocket and dragged out his wallet. He peeled off three hundred-dollar bills and laid them on the desk. An offering to no-questions-asked commerce.

  The bearded man said, “Well, glad to have a guest like you. Whatever your reason for being in Dark Glades.” He waited for Carver to toss back the conversational ball. When there was no response, he picked up the bills and laid a registration card on the desk. He said, “My name’s Eddie Watts. Just Watts is what I’m called, though. I be of any help, you lemme know.”

  Carver finished signing the card, using his real name. Why not? If Roberto Gomez traced them this far, he wouldn’t be thrown by a Smith or a Jones on a motel register. But Carver signed Beth in simply as “and friend.” Some sort of subconscious sense of chivalry? Protecting her reputation, for God’s sake? Do you underestimate me because I’m a woman?

  Watts rotated the card so he could read it. He had scraggly blond hair, though his beard was black. A wide, amiable face. Blue eyes whose pupils somehow seemed dusty and dulled. He squinted out the dirty office window at the car and said, “Your friend’s black.” As if Carver might not have noticed.

  “That a problem?” Carver asked.

  Watts shook his head. “Not with me. Got some real rednecks in Dark Glades, though. Not to mention stiff-necked religious folks that ain’t all that tolerant.”

  “We’ll spend most of our time in our rooms,” Carver said.

  Watts tried hard not to give him the wrong kind of smile, and couldn’t help shooting another glance out the window. He said, “Sure. Like I said, lemme know if you need anything.” He handed Carver two keys attached to green plastic tags. A third key with a red tag. “The red one fits the connecting door. Other two are to rooms six and seven, right near the center of the building. Best I got. Icemaker and soda machine right nearby.”

  Carver decided to let Watts assume a romantic motive for the stay at Casa Grande. It would be more believable and less disturbing than the truth. He laid a fifty-dollar bill on the desk and said, “My friend and I wanted to get away and enjoy being by ourselves for a while. You understand. If anybody comes around asking about either of us, will you let me know?”

  Watts laid his palm over the fifty and made it disappear as if he were demonstrating sleight of hand. “Glad to extend the courtesy, Mr. Carver.”

  Carver gripped the keys in his free hand and limped toward the door. Behind him Watts said, “I myself don’t care a whit about color. Think black’s rough, try being five feet tall.”

  Carver knew Watts would have to stretch high on elevator shoes to top five feet, but he said nothing. It was self-deception that made life tolerable, so why fuck with it when it was harmless?

  As he stepped outside, the sauna-like heat folded itself around him. He got in the car, drove down to cabin 6, and backed into a parking slot. “The guy at the desk has the impression we’re lovers,” he said.

  Beth was sweating. Her hair had come partly down to curl darkly in front of her ears. Even her gold loop earrings seemed to be drooping. When he turned off the engine, she said, “Carver, it’s not like I don’t appreciate—”

  He cut her off by handing her the key to 6. “There’s a connecting door we keep unlocked. We can also keep it closed.”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry I assumed, but you know how it is.”

  “Yeah.” He climbed out of the car and opened the trunk. She reached in quickly and pulled out her Gucci suitcase. He looked around at the looming green swamp and the narrow gravel road. Some sort of brown-and-gray bird with long, spindly legs was standing near the road, studying him with cocked head. It made a throaty clucking noise he’d never heard a bird make before. Carver got out his own suitcase and slammed the trunk lid. “Let’s settle in, then get some supper.”

  “Sounds right. Just give me time to take a shower.”

  He waited until she was inside, then unlocked the door to 7 and limped in. Warm, stale air gave way for the fetidness of the swamp pushing in around him.

  Actually, the room was better than the outside of the motel suggested. It was small and clean, with a double bed, an old walnut chifforobe instead of a closet, and a new-looking K-mart-brand color TV; an oak nightstand and an orange ceramic reading lamp were on each side of the bed. There was a dimestore print of a desert landscape on the wall over the brass headboard. The bathroom had black and white hexagonal tile on the floor, a tub with an added-on shower attachment and plastic curtain, a toilet bowl that was cracked but apparently didn’t leak, plenty of towels and soap. There was a full roll of toilet paper, and a spare tucked in the plumbing beneath the washbasin. Sun poured through the single small window in the bathroom, and everything smelled like pine-scented disinfectant.

  Near the bed was an air conditioner like the one in the office, protruding from the wall. Carver hobbled across the worn but clean gray carpet, switched the unit on, and slid the thermostat over to High. It was noisy but seemed to work okay.

  He went to the connecting door and unlocked it, leaving the key in it. There was a sliding-bolt lock as well as the lock in the doorknob. It had been painted over years ago, when the door had been enameled white, and was stuck; it took him a while to force the bolt free and unlock it. Probably there was another one just like it on the other side. Carver didn’t try to open the door.

  Plumbing rattled in the walls and water hissed. Beth running her shower.

  Carver lugged his suitcase over to the bed, opened it, and got out some fresh underwear and socks. He placed the Colt in one of the chifforobe drawers.

  He got undressed, then went into the bathroom to take his own shower.

  Beth yelped on the other side of the wall as he twisted the faucet handle and water spewed over him. There was a frantic banging on the wall. A faint voice. “Carver, you turned your shower on and my water stopped!”

  He picked up the tiny, lilac-scented bar of motel soap and lathered his arms and chest, pretending not to hear.

  21

  BETH’S SHOWER WAS STILL running as Carver toweled dry and limped from the bathroom. The short-napped gray carpet was rough under his bare soles. It was cool in the room and felt good. He sat on the edge of the bed and dressed himself, then scooted around until he could reach the old-fashioned black phone on one of the nightstands. Dialed 9 for an outside line.

  McGregor wasn’t on duty at Del Moray police headquarters. Carver hung up. Dialed 9 again, then McGregor’s home number. Got an answering machine.

  When the high-pitched tone sounded to signal him to begin his message, he said simply, “This is Carver.”

  Click. McGregor was home and had been screening his calls. “Got something for me?” his voice said.

  “It’s possible.”

  “This line sounds funny. Where you calling from?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “If it didn’t matter I wouldn’t have asked, fuckface. You better not cut up cute with me or—”

  “Did I hear you say you had something for me?” Carver interrupted. He was tired of McGregor’s threats; he already knew he was dealing with something sick and vicious with a badge.

  McGregor sighed loudly; it was a lonesome sound on the already hissing connection. “All right, I’ll play your game. You want me to say please with sugar on it? Grow the fuck up, Carver!”

  A series of sharp raps sounded from the closed connecting door. Beth was working on the painted-over sliding bolt lock on her side, maybe using a shoe for a hammer.

  McGregor said, “You at a carpenters’ convention?”

  “Just a minute.”

  McGregor objected to Carver leaving the phone, but Carver didn’t listen to what he said. A barrage of tinny obscenity trailed faintly from the receiver as he laid it on the nightstand.

  Carver got up with the help of his cane. Limped over and pounded on the door a few times with the heel of his
hand. Kind of hurt, but he loosened the door where it had been painted to the frame. He heard Beth curse, more sharp rapping coming from near the bolt lock, then a metallic scraping sound. Carver twisted the doorknob. Felt it come alive in his hand as it rotated from the other side. He yanked backward and the door made an odd popping sound and swung open.

  Beth was standing with a high-heeled shoe in her right hand. He’d identified the rapping sound correctly; she’d been using the shoe as a hammer on the bolt lock. She looked as if she wanted to use it the same way on Carver. She was wearing faded designer jeans and a blue short-sleeved blouse. White Reeboks. Still had on her gold loop earrings. She said, “This sure as hell isn’t the Dark Glades Hilton, Carver.”

  He said, “Yes it is.”

  She strode into his room like a queen claiming property rights, immediately noticing the phone off the hook. “I interrupting?”

  “No, better if you hear.”

  Beth stood with her long arms folded as Carver returned to the phone and lifted the receiver; he wondered if she realized how it emphasized her breasts. “Still there?”

  “I’m still here,” McGregor said. “Your main squeeze got a problem?”

  “Not anymore.” If McGregor thought Beth’s voice belonged to Edwina, fine.

  “So what’s this conversation about, asshole?”

  Carver glanced at Beth. “Roberto Gomez. I know for sure he tried to kill his wife and killed her sister instead.”

  “He pull the trigger?”

  “No, but it was his man on the roof, acting under Roberto’s orders.”

  “Why would he want to kill his wife? Even guys like Gomez don’t often do that when they been jilted. They stop to think about it, realize cunt’s replaceable.”

  “Doesn’t matter why. I’m telling you he can be nailed for it.”

  McGregor was quiet for a while. Then he said, “Who was the shooter, that guy Hirsh?”

  “Not Hirsh. It was one of a number of soldiers Gomez has out looking for his wife.”

  “Gomez has killed before, Carver. He’s smart enough to arrange for cover. Has an alibi in this case, in fact. He told it to the Orlando police.”