sat back. “Thing is, I regret getting you into this, my friend. It’s time we give it to the Del Moray police, eh?”
“There’s nothing to give them,” Carver said. “The word of an old man that he saw somebody in a car he thinks had that license-plate number, talking to the head nurse at Sunhaven. No crime there. And remember, Amos’s family’s about an inch away from having him declared legally insane so he’ll be committed. Some potential witness.”
Desoto sat silently for a moment and considered what Carver had said. He didn’t seem impressed. “The fight you had, Carver. If you can call it a fight. The assailant you described fits Raffy Ortiz. Got to be him. This is more than I wanted from you. Let’s give it to McGregor, let him deal with Raffy.” Desoto smiled. “It could be interesting: J. R. Ewing versus Godzilla.”
“Not yet,” Carver said. “You hired me, so I’ll do it my way.”
“ Your way? Don’t hand me that Frank Sinatra shit.”
“Lyrics are Old Blue Eyes’s, sentiment’s mine.”
“He won’t bleed, you will.”
“I’ll try to approach this so it doesn’t work out that way.”
“I can fire you, amigo.”
“Someone who hasn’t paid somebody can’t fire them,” Carver said. “Though I admit it’s a fine legal point.”
A tragic expression slid into Desoto’s liquid brown eyes. He knew Carver. “So that’s where we are. You can’t turn loose of this one, can you?”
“Won’t turn loose.”
“Same thing. You don’t know the difference; that’s your problem.”
“I’m in it till it’s settled,” Carver said.
Desoto sighed.
“That’s how it is,” Carver said. He spoke calmly but there was no compromise in his voice.
“Then I’ll give you more information about the people you’re dealing with at Sunhaven,” Desoto said. “I checked further on Birdie Reeves. She’s a fifteen-year-old runaway from Indianapolis. Playing big girl, driving around Florida without a license. Real name’s Beatrice Reeves.”
And her landlady knows about it, Carver thought. That explained the suspicious, protective attitude when he’d gone to her apartment building. And someone in administration at Sunhaven might know Birdie’s true age and her past.
“We could turn her in and see she’s sent back,” Desoto said, “but she fled a hellhole. Mother beat her since she was an infant, and her father was a sicko who found her impossible to resist when she got to be eleven. The court sent her to a foster home two years ago and she was molested there. She ran. Who could blame her?”
“She seems to be doing okay here,” Carver said. “Got a job, her own apartment. Not much, but something. Best thing to do is leave the kid alone, let her pretend she’s grown up. She really will be soon enough.”
“My recommendation also,” Desoto said. “Though not officially. We never talked about this, okay?”
“Talked about what?” Carver asked.
Desoto stood up and tossed two folded bills, a ten and a five, on the table. “Beer’s on me.”
“I’m grateful.”
“I’m grateful, too,” Desoto said sincerely. “Also fearful.” He smoothed nonexistent wrinkles in his coat and pants. “I’m glad you decided not to order anything to eat. I’d have felt like I was dining with someone during their last meal.”
“I’ll report to you again soon,” Carver said, “if for no other reason than to get my confidence restored.”
Desoto flashed a smile that was very white in the dim restaurant and clapped Carver on the back. “My way of saying be careful, amigo. Please don’t underestimate Raffy Ortiz. This is a guy can make your childhood nightmares seem pleasant.”
He left the restaurant hurriedly, looking straight ahead, back and neck rigid, like a kid who’d just as soon not glance at shadows. Handsome in his tailored suit. Dashing as a movie star.
The glum waitress coasted in, scooped up the bills from the table, and asked Carver if he wanted anything else. He told her no. She seemed glad as she set off toward another table.
He sat quietly and finished his beer. He couldn’t specifically recall any of his childhood nightmares, but he knew he’d had them. Was sure he had. He was no exception. They were part of his experience, vague and undefined and still with him. Submerged in a dark tidepool of his mind.
And closer to the surface than they’d been in years.
12
Carver had barely crossed the city line into Del Moray when a siren gave an abbreviated yowl behind the Olds, like a yodeler who’d suddenly had a hand clamped over his mouth. He looked into the rearview mirror and saw the whirling red and blue roof-bar lights of a patrol car flashing feebly in the sunlight. Immediately his gaze flicked to the speedometer. He was driving a few miles per hour below the limit. While he was in Orlando, he’d gone to an auto salvage yard where he often got used parts for the Olds and had his cracked windshield replaced in almost a matter of minutes. Hadn’t violated any traffic laws, he was sure. Not in the ten seconds he’d been in Del Moray before the patrol car had slid in behind him.
He slowed the Olds, let it roll onto the road’s sloping shoulder, and coasted to a stop. Gravel crunched beneath the tires and pinged off the insides of the fenders until the big car ceased motion.
Carver watched in the side mirror as the patrol car’s door opened and a tan uniform climbed out and swaggered toward him, arms swinging wide to clear the nightstick, cuffs, and holstered gun bobbing on his hips. As he got nearer, Carver heard gravel scrunching beneath his soles with each measured step. The inexorable stride of the law.
“You Fred Carver?”
The voice startled Carver. It came from right over his shoulder. The cop had been much closer than he’d appeared in the mirror; mirrors did that, distorted distance.
Carver acknowledged who he was and waited for the uniform to ask for his driver’s license.
Instead, the dry, official voice said, “Lieutenant McGregor wants to talk with you.”
Was that what this was about?
“He knows my address,” Carver said. “My phone number, too.”
“All I know,” the uniform said, “is my job’s to see you come to headquarters and be interviewed. Immediately.”
“What’s with McGregor? He doing this to demonstrate his authority?”
The cop’s beefy, perspiring face almost broke into a smile. They were getting to know McGregor in the Del Moray department. Getting to fear him, too. “He’s got the authority to demonstrate, Mr. Carver,” the uniform said. “So do I, you want to make things difficult. No sense creating a problem, though. Will you follow my car, sir?”
“All right,” Carver said. Why fight this? He’d see McGregor and get it over with as soon as possible. “I’ll be in your mirror, officer.”
Now the ruddy-faced cop did smile. It was an almost apologetic flickering in the blue eyes and at the corners of the mouth. He didn’t like this. He had more important things to do than errand-boy bullshit for the higher-ups and he was relieved Carver was cooperating. McGregor must have suggested there might be an argument; take the hard-ass line with that rebel Carver, if you have to. No need. Carver had kept it as cool as possible in ninety-degree heat.
The uniform said, “Thanks, Mr. Carver.”
Carver started the Olds engine and waited until the patrol car had pulled out onto the road and moved in front of him.
Though he knew where police headquarters was, he kept the Olds’s long hood aimed at the cruiser’s back bumper all the way. Make the uniform feel useful.
Del Moray police headquarters occupied a converted brick house with tall white colonial pillars supporting a miniature porch roof. The roof wouldn’t be of much use in providing shade or shelter from rain. The booking area
