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.”
