confused and astounded him. They were like violent weather before a seasonal change: rapid, unpredictable. Her life shifting in juxtaposition with the thing that warmed and sustained it, her earth rotating away from Willis, into what she dreaded would be her winter.
He paid the cashier, got another Orange Sloshy to go, and went out into the heat of the parking lot.
As he settled into the Olds, he spilled some of the Orange Sloshy down the front of his tropical-bird shirt, but the stain was lost in the colorful maelstrom of bright curved beaks and beating wings. The sudden coldness on his chest and stomach made Carver shiver.
He started the Olds and drove for home.
When he parked in front of his cottage, he saw Desoto waiting for him on the front porch.
The lieutenant was wearing an elegant gray suit with the coat buttoned, and he appeared even more out of place on the beach than Alex Burr had that morning. Desoto looked more like a handsome Spanish don with an eye for royal coquettes than a cop.
“Ah, Carver,” he said, as Carver stepped up onto the porch. He breathed in deeply, making it a meaningful gesture. “I love the smell of the ocean. I don’t get to the coast often enough.” As if to punctuate his statement, a particularly large wave broke on the beach with a slapping, backwashing roar. It seemed to bring with it a breeze carrying the faintly rotted, fishy yet somehow fresh scent that Desoto missed inland in Orlando.
“What brings you to the coast this time?” Carver asked. He unlocked the door, pushed it open, and stepped aside, leaning on his cane and waiting for Desoto to go in. A porch plank squeaked under the weight concentrated at the tip of the cane.
“Willis Davis,” Desoto said, moving gracefully past Carver into the cottage and looking around.
Carver followed. “I’ve heard enough about Willis for one day.”
“He’s a problem for you in more ways than one, no doubt,” Desoto said. He shot his white grin at Carver. “She needs to find him, see him again maybe, to forget him.”
“That’s what she seems to think.”
“You should be tolerant, Carver.”
“Oh, I am. Jesus, I am! Want a beer?”
“Yes, in a glass.”
Carver went behind the counter, got a Budweiser from the refrigerator, and found a clean water tumbler for Desoto. He watched Desoto pour the beer carefully, as if he were a chemist, so that the head of foam was precisely as he wanted it.
“Aren’t you drinking?” Desoto asked, putting down the empty can.
“No, I just had two Orange Sloshies.”
“Hm.” Desoto took a sip of beer, smiled with the satisfaction of sated thirst, and licked his lips. “We ran the Willis Davis prints,” he said. “His real name is Willis Eiler, a.k.a. William Corker a.k.a. Willis Davis. He got out of federal prison in Marion, Illinois, eight months ago after serving five years on a narcotics charge. He sold some cocaine to a federal agent. Eiler also has been convicted of swindling a wealthy widow in a real-estate scam in Missouri.”
“What are his stats?”
“Thirty-nine-year-old male Caucasian, five-foot-eleven, brown hair, hazel eyes. They wired me his photo.” Desoto reached into an inside pocket of his suitcoat, pulled out a black-and-white photograph, and handed it to Carver.
As he accepted the photograph, Carver realized he was breathing rapidly and his hands were unsteady. Finally he was going to see Willis Davis-or Willis Eiler.
It was a prison mug shot, full front and profile.
Eiler didn’t look worth all the fuss. He was an ordinary type with even features, a certain stubbornness in his eyes, and handsome not so much for any distinctive quality but because there was nothing distinctive about him. No rough edges. Nothing not to like. He’d have been good at modeling suits in the Sears catalogue.
So this was Willis, Edwina’s all-or-nothing bet. Maybe his Everyman quality made him a sort of blank canvas that women like Edwina longed to paint their dreams on.
“Keep it,” Desoto said, when Carver held the photo out to return it.
Carver glanced again at the regular, bland face in the photograph. “A crook and a con artist from the time he met her,” he said.
“Did you ever doubt it?”
“Yeah,” Carver said. “She had me doubting it for a while, off and on.”
“Even she can’t doubt it now,” Desoto said. “He was using her. He ingratiated himself with her so she’d help him get employed at Sun South, so he could set up his phony time-share racket.”
“He had to be good to fool her,” Carver said.
“He is good. And Edwina Talbot was ripe to be fooled. Wanted her last chance. Men like Eiler, they can sense that kind of yearning in women, amigo. They feed on it.”
“Knowing who he really is doesn’t get us any closer to him,” Carver said.
“Not yet, maybe. But it might.” Desoto tossed back his head and drained the rest of his beer.
“Another?” Carver asked.
“No, I have to get back to Orlando. I wanted to give you the information and photo personally. And to see the ocean. I’ll come out here for a while on my vacation, Carver, and we’ll do some surf fishing. You can tie a line on the end of your cane, eh?”
“Sure,” Carver said. Six months ago, a few weeks ago, he might have taken offense at a remark like that, even from Desoto. The Edwina effect, he realized. Damn her, she was good for him.
After Desoto left, Carver got himself a beer from the refrigerator, then propped up the photograph on the table and sat looking at it for a long time, wishing there were some way he could crawl inside the mind of Willis Eiler.
That night Carver dreamed about sinking slowly in the dark ocean, opening his eyes underwater and seeing faces drift by-Edwina, Desoto, Willis Eiler, and there was Verna Blaney, with her scar blanched white by the sea. They might have been the faces of the dead; Carver couldn’t be sure. He called out to them underwater, silently. Only Desoto replied, seemed to shout a warning that was whirled away by the current as a thousand tiny, glittering bubbles. The face of Silverio Lujan floated past slowly, troubled, eyes closed. A man with Latin features seemed to drift straight up from the bottom of the ocean, extending his arms toward Carver.
Something-a sea creature?-closed its tentacles around Carver’s neck. He suddenly couldn’t breathe; his lungs were working in violent spasms; he was drowning. Someone was cursing hoarsely in Spanish. A huge man with foul and beery breath had his hands clamped on Carver’s throat, digging blunt, powerful thumbs into his windpipe.
Carver woke up. Suddenly. Seeking the reassurance of the real world. Finding instead vacuum and panic.
A huge man with foul and beery breath had his hands clamped on Carver’s throat, digging blunt, powerful thumbs into his windpipe.
CHAPTER 25
Carver was instantly aware of the pressure on his chest. The man choking him bore down with the weight of a building.
Terror struck cold in Carver as he tried to draw breath and got only pain. His ribs seemed about to cave in; he thought he could hear the cartilage in his neck cracking under those probing thumbs that felt as if they were touching together inside his throat, pinching off his air. The man’s rancid breath was hot on his face in the darkness as the attacker muttered a throaty stream of Spanish. Carver caught only one word: “hermano.” Brother. He knew he was meeting Jorge Lujan, and that this was violent vengeance for that day on the road outside Solarville.
Carver squirmed convulsively and managed to get his own arms inside Lujan’s thick, locked arms. He clasped his hands tightly for leverage, bent his elbows as much as possible, and pried his arms out sideways against Lujan’s.
The pressure on his throat gave some, but not much. He kicked with his good leg, twisted, struggling to get leverage, focusing every measure of strength he had on separating Lujan’s muscular arms, parting those digging
